RFC: kernel-modules in Fedora Extras

[Ville Skyttä]

On Fri, 2006-01-13 at 16:27 +0100, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> Am Freitag, den 13.01.2006, 08:59 +0200 schrieb Ville Skyttä:

> > I think the part of this experiment that handles variants is definitely
> > an improvement, assuming that the build system will be capable of
> > passing the correct variants to the builds.  Can we assume that?
> 
> I did not talk to dcbw about that yet but will do that soon. Anyway, we
> still can hardcode the kvariants if it does not work in the beginning.

Ack.

> > The other part that shuffles stuff around %prep/%build/%install can
> > result in specfile simplifications, 
> 
> Agreed. And there is an additional benefit: the debug-packages are a lot
> smaller if you build more then one 

Hm, something missing from that sentence, eg. "variant in the same dir"?

Actually, if I understand correctly, that's not a benefit, it's
breakage.  The debuginfo packages would then contain the symbols and
sources primarily for the last variant built in the loop plus possible
leftovers from earlier builds, with probably most of the earlier builds'
stuff overwritten or removed.

Both the contents of the sources and symbols may and do differ between
variants, and it's possible for some variants to contain modules and
sources not at all present for others (which should be obviously
avoided).  The lirc package is an example of all this.

> If no one complains loudly soon about this fedora-kmodhelper idea in
> above srpm then I think I'll work on modifying the last
> extras-kmod-proposal to a solution with the fedora-kmodhelper scheme. 

+1

Here's a couple of updated example packages, converted to use kmodhelper
(I suggest /usr/lib/rpm/redhat/kmodtool and %{kmodtool} for it, BTW) and
avoiding debuginfo problems.  Also added some additional known variants
to the script.  The code in both packages is in a pretty bad shape
regarding the latest Rawhide kernels (most modules disabled in lirc,
thinkpad doesn't compile at all), but better on FC4, and anyway good
enough for illustration purposes.

http://cachalot.mine.nu/5/SRPMS/lirc-kmod-0.8.0-0.8.pre4.2.6.15_1.1853_FC5.src.rpm
http://cachalot.mine.nu/5/SRPMS/thinkpad-kmod-5.8-7.2.6.14_1.1656_FC4.src.rpm