Request: contributor to put DKMS into Fedora Extras

[Warren Togami]

Matt Domsch wrote:
> Dell's lawyers have a couple concerns with the Fedora Corporate
> Contributors Agreement.  Until those get settled, I and my teammates
> can't become official Contributors.
> 
> But, we'd like to see DKMS (http://linux.dell.com/dkms) included into
> Fedora Extras ASAP.  Given recent discussions on fedora-devel-list,
> several people think that's a good idea.
> 
> To that end, would any of the current approved contributors care to
> contribute DKMS into Extras?  It's GPL of course.
> 
> Then at some future date, we can negotiate to transfer ownership to
> Gary Lerhaupt once Dell has official contributor status.
> 

Based on our past discussion about DKMS on this list, we have technical 
concerns about it and are not sure this is a direction we want to head.

The kernel-devel and kernel-module-foo approach is something that we 
have been working on as a supportable alternative.  We need to better 
standardize, fix and document it, then better automate package builds in 
order to provide all kernel modules quickly for new released kernels.

This being said if DKMS can live as an optional and inobtrusive 
alternative to kernel-module-foo packages then it may be acceptable to 
include both.  I am guessing that kernel module sources need to be 
prepared specially for DKMS?  This may be fine if they NEVER conflict 
with kernel-module-foo.

There are other concerns like DKMS installing files that are not tracked 
by RPM's database that are of varying levels of badness.  We need to 
further discuss the pros and cons here along with the kernel-module-foo 
package approach.

Warren Togami
wtogami at redhat.com