kernel source code

[not disclosed]

What exactly is the problem with including kernel-sourcecode?

It makes it easy to take someone else's driver and compile it against your 
source, it makes it easy to nobble the source and recompile - I have spent 
the last hour trying to install the source from
the src rpm following the instructions in 
http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/release-notes/fc3/x86/
and I still don't have the source code so I still can't compile my drivers.  
  I can't be arsed to repeat
this 20 times when I shift from fc2 in my lab - with the kernel-sourcecode 
package I would "yum install kernel-sourcecode" and be done.

Removing the kernel-sourcecode is a retrograde step that goes against the 
principle of packaging
stuff up - you are forcing the end user to learn a lot of largely useless, 
arbitrary code rubbish in order to achieve their task.  The annoying thing 
is that it doesn't seem to be saving anyone anything. The idea that it 
causes harm by duplicating things that are available in the source is daft - 
if you followed this to its conclusion then you would stop distributingmost 
binaries.

SA



>From: Warren Togami <wtogami at redhat.com>
>Reply-To: Development discussions related to Fedora Core 
><fedora-devel-list at redhat.com>
>To: Development discussions related to Fedora Core 
><fedora-devel-list at redhat.com>
>Subject: Re: kernel source code
>Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 00:31:23 -1000
>
>not disclosed wrote:
>>
>>We need it for building drivers which aren't included in the fedora 
>>distros - not everything in the world is rpm based.  We also need it to 
>>customize the kernels.
>
>Did you miss the part about NOT NEEDING kernel source in order to build 
>modules against that kernel?  FC2 and FC3 kernel provides headers that are 
>sufficient 99% of the time, while FC4 split that out into kernel-devel 
>which serves a similar purpose.
>
>If you look at the 3rd party kernel module packages like nvidia or vmware, 
>they build against these headers.
>
>Warren Togami
>wtogami at redhat.com
>
>--
>fedora-devel-list mailing list
>fedora-devel-list at redhat.com
>http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list

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