[Fedora-packaging] Kernel modules packaged for dkms

[Matt Domsch]

On Tue, Oct 10, 2006 at 08:34:28AM -0400, seth vidal wrote:
> I think dkms is a good solution for sysadmins managing a bunch of
> systems - but for our use situation it causes issues b/c we want people
> to be able to install and use kernel modules w/o having to build them
> and/or have all the build tools installed.

To be fair, DKMS doesn't strictly require the build tools and/or
kernel-$foo-devel be installed.  (The current Extras requirement that
kernel-devel be installed is, IMHO, a mistake, but FE Review strongly
asked for it).  It's designed to use kernel-devel and a toolchain if
present and no prebuilt module exists for your currently running
kernel.  Like the current FE kmod proposal, the build system *could*
rebuild *dkms drivers for the new kernel, and repackage them in the
*dkms package.  Exactly the same pain is needed for kmods; DKMS just
gives you an "out" if you've got a toolchain and kernel-devel
installed but your package provider hasn't (yet) respun their *dkms
package.

Thanks,
Matt

-- 
Matt Domsch
Software Architect
Dell Linux Solutions linux.dell.com & www.dell.com/linux
Linux on Dell mailing lists @ http://lists.us.dell.com