After having compiled the kernel recently I noticed that kernel source was prepared and "cleaned" (remove compiled modules and other unneeded files) and placed within the kernel package. I can see this as a good thing, in some cases, but since I compiled my kernel I am not in need of beeing able to pack the sources and therefore I don't need to have them "cleaned". I talked to Lucas about it and he suggested he'd place this within an 'Ask', but I have a better idea. I want to split the kernel source and kernel image recipes and make them separate recipes and packages.
My idea is that the kernel sources does not have to be a package with unmanaged files. Instead all (cleaned) sources could be placed in /Programs/Linux-Source/<kernel version>/lib/modules/$(uname -r)/source with a symlink, build -> source, in the same directory. Then the source will be available without having it to be unmanaged, which saves a lot of copying. To be able to to this there should be a kernel-source recipe, that is almost an exact copy of the kernel, but instead of doing 'make oldconfig' or 'make menuconfig' it should use the config from /System/Kernel/Status/config.gz. And instead of installing kernel image and modules it should copy the sources and "clean" them. To me this only adds a small overhead for this separate recipe. This still makes it easy to make a kernel-source package, as there is a recipe, but it also adds the benefit of making it easy for anyone to make their own kernel source available for their running kernel, even if there doesn't exist a package. Plus that the files isn't unmanaged any more. I really hate the use of unmanaged, when there are alternative ways to do it without unmanaged. Then I was thinking that, since kernel-source can be an own (regular) package, why not the kernel? I know why it hasn't been done before (module-init-tools doesn't support modules that are symlinked), but what about patching module-init-tools to handle symlinks? If I remember correctly, last time this was up to discussion this only included a small change, however I can't remember why we didn't choose to do it. Now when we are starting to provide kernel packages maybe we should take a look at this again? -- /Jonas Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/ _______________________________________________ gobolinux-devel mailing list gobolinux-devel@lists.gobolinux.org http://lists.gobolinux.org/mailman/listinfo/gobolinux-devel
