How to package kernel module

[Paul P Komkoff Jr]

Replying to Tom 'spot' Callaway:
> On top of that, I'm very hesitant to include kernel-module-* packages on
> principle. I feel strongly that most of the packages that we could
> include (open source, not patent infringing) should be going upstream so
> that they can get in the FC kernels.
> 
> So, my first question is: Why aren't the zaptel kernel modules in the
> upstream 2.6 tree?

As Dave Jones said, the 1st major obstacle is code quality. If someone
will send something like zaptel in its current shape to lkml, Cristoph
Hellwig will kill him in a very very violent way.
I believe that finally it will be in good shape, but "finally" is a
good keyword for exception unrolling, but not for specifying time
constraints.
Asterisk is a hot topic right now. I, personally, trying to build some
medium-sized applications with it, but some people might want to use
it as their little in-house PBX (especially after switching all
long-distance over to VoIP in north america). Audience is growing, and
they are forced to use something like AstLinux or any another distro
with precompiled/prepackaged stuff.

Of course someone can manually build/install modules as needed, but
this will effectively pollute the system and result in the same
hassles as discussed by Dave below (stuff breaks after kernel
upgrade). We can at least try to follow some policy, like "build
kernel modules in advance for every kernel sitting in testing right
now" and punch maintainers in the head if some module breaks in this
situation.

Second major obstacle is that zaptel kernel modules are under
development, and I think it will be difficult to connect zaptel
community with linux kernel community. The only thing came into my
mind is to host -zaptel tree somewhere for some time, cook it in -mm,
but after some time someone will decide to rip guts out of zaptel.c
and all will break.
Right now zaptel releases follow asterisk ones.

Right now I can disable kernel module compilation and put enabled srpm
somewhere on web. I physically cannot build modules for any available
architecture. Any other stuff (zaptel userspace, libpri, and asterisk)
will be available for review soon.

-- 
Paul P 'Stingray' Komkoff Jr // http://stingr.net/key <- my pgp key
 This message represents the official view of the voices in my head