kmods poll

[Axel Thimm]

On Tue, Jun 19, 2007 at 03:01:07PM -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:
> I'd like to just do a brief poll here just to see how many are yay or
> nay for kmods.  And I'm not talking about their current implementation
> or the other various ways that the idea can be accomplished, but rather
> on the idea of having kernel modules as separate packages in general.
> 
> If you're against the general idea and want to follow up with reasons
> why that's fine.

I'm late in the query, but definitely, yes. People come screaming at
ATrpms to get kmdl updates which can't go in as afast into either
the kernel sources proper or a patch into the kernel rpm.

Any kernel module project will have external kernel module build
setups available before being able to get into the kernel, even the
ones that already have a slot there.

Arguing that one should wait for the vanilla kernel to incorporate
those patches while OTOh we are talking about how to evr
CVS/svn/git/hg cuts of everything else is a bit
hypocritical. Especially with all the patching that still happens in
the Fedora kernel.

> I just want to avoid implementation discussions at the moment if
> possible.

Unfortunately the (bad) implementations and lack of a standard (and
"standard" is not always what is written in the guidelines ...) add to
the problem enormously. I don't think you can really separate the
discussion. If you had a nicely working scheme everybody would
support, you wouldn't have that much hostility against packaging
kernel modules.

Heck, *some* of the patches to the Fedora kernel could be managed as
external kernel modules and save the pain of upgrading the main kernel
package when such a subsystem is touched. In fact many such changes
that people would like to see fixed have to wait to queue up to make a
kernel update worthwhile for all Fedora users.

Anyway the latter is a pipe dream - unless the kernel packager group
at Fedora sees truly painlessly working kernel module packages there
won't be any such outsourcing.

But getting an infrastructure that supports building sane kernel
module packages would be a plus in any relation, even if not used by
Fedora itself for more than half a dozen packages. As a fact currently
several repos are looking at using koji and one blocker is whether
adding kernel module support would be possible.

There are also some RHEL-only related benefits to endorse external kernel
module packages, but I won't dwel into that on *fedora-kernel* :)
-- 
Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net
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