kernel modules/kmods/dkms (Re: Plan for tomorrows (20070906) FESCO meeting)

Thorsten Leemhuis fedora at leemhuis.info
Fri Sep 7 09:24:34 UTC 2007


On 07.09.2007 11:04, Parag N(पराग़) wrote:
> On 9/7/07, Thorsten Leemhuis <fedora at leemhuis.info> wrote:
>> On 06.09.2007 20:43, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
>>>>> The complexity of separately-packaged kernel modules is unnecessary, and the users' problems with upgrading when the modules are not built synchronously with the kernel will no longer be possible.
>>>> Same for dkms, as modules might break if the api changed.
>>> slightly less complex for dkms, because with dkms you don't have to
>>> deal with synchronously building the modules on the central build
>>> system.
>> Yeah -- so we offload the trouble to the user. And that's not the right
>> thing to do IMHO. We should provide pre-compiled kernel-modules if we
>> want to ship kernel-modules. dkms optional for that that want it: sure.
>> But the signals from FESCo are afaics: no kernel-modules at all. And I
>> think that's the right thing to do in the merged Fedora world.
>   Ok.  So why we are discussing this again and again creating many
> threads on fedora-devel mailing list?

I'm unsure myself. dwmw2's proposal afaics mainly reads as "no
separately packaged *kernel-modules* (in source or binary form) in
Fedora at all"; but he uses the term "kmods" here and there (and kmod
specific examples), so some people afaics got the idea that something
else (like dkms) would be acceptable. I doubt that's the intention
behind dwmw2's proposal. David, can you clarify? Or Jesse (who's listed
as owner for the proposal as well)?

>  Why not to close this topic
> with "No Kmod Packages Allowed in Fedora Repository"?

Same here ;-) Make that a "No separately packaged kernel-modules in
Fedora at all" and it gets a +1 from me.

>   I think still something is going on that is preventing FESCO to
> directly come to conclusion of disallowing kernel module packages in
> fedora".

>From looking at the FESCo meeting logs it were just real life issues:
dwmw2 was not around yesterday and people were unsure what the dkms
stuff was about afaics. Last week FESCo iirc didn't decide because it
wanted to see the proposal reviewed in public.

CU
knurd




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