Martin Schulze wrote: > Only a few people will probably have noticed the mess resulting from > tons of different kernel packages in the stable (and unstable) > distribution. Not only there are several versions of kernel source in > each architecture, they are also different for most architectures. > Only mips and mipsel share the same kernel source. > > To make it worse, there are also third party kernel modules that > depend on a particular version of the kernel source (they don't depend > on the particular Debian revision, though, I hope). > > As a result of this, it is almost impossible to update the kernel in a > released Debian distribution.
Manoj emphasized[1] that using one single kernel source package per kernel version and maintaining several patch packages for each architecture which finally build our kernel-image-$version packages is possible. However, Herbert Xu hasn't contributed to this thread yet and most of our architecture maintainers haven't raised a word either. These are most probably the people who will continue to do the work, and hence, need our support if the kernel source tree should be consolidated. I wonder if some people (Maybe Manoj and Russell, who are both quite competent) could help with this effort. I have to admit, that having several architectures use the same plain kernel source from Linus Torvalds aka kernel.org could be problematic since many architecture ports use their own kernel repository which is not always synced with the main kernel tree for whatever reasons. However, I do believe that it should be a goal of Debian to share as much code as possible and hence share as much of the kernel through various architectures as well. > Removing one kernel version and including another without rebuilding > all modules packages will break several installations. Not removing > the old packages will make the archive grow through time which will > cause problems with CD build scripts. To make it more interesting, Matt Zimmerman revealed[2] that merging all kernel source packages would save space of one CD from our archive and our CD images. Ola Lundqvist added[3] that building modules packages is a non-trivial task since the build process often depends on having the full kernel source installed and already compiled. He even provided some code that could help to cope with this. He also added a proposed kernel policy. Please read and comment. I wonder whether the build scripts of modules packages can be modified to not require the compiled kernel source anymore. This would at least remove this requirement and turn module building into a less painful task. Links: 1. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2003/debian-devel-200305/msg01348.html 2. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2003/debian-devel-200305/msg01368.html 3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2003/debian-devel-200305/msg01390.html Since sarge is far from being released, now would be a perfect time to start working on consolidating kernel and source packages in order to have a new and much better working system ready for sarge when it is time to release. Regards, Joey -- WARNING: Do not execute! This call violates patent DE10108564. http://www.elug.de/projekte/patent-party/patente/DE10108564 wget -O patinfo-`date +"%Y%m%d"`.html http://patinfo.ffii.org/ Please always Cc to me when replying to me on the lists.
