Re: Maintaining kernel module packages?

[David Z Maze <dmaze@debian.org>]

Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au> writes:
HX> David Z. Maze <dmaze@debian.org> wrote:
 DZM> deal?  If not, is there some way that I can build at least the
 DZM> i386 modules without installing every flavor of every version of
 DZM> every kernel-source package?
HX> 
HX> There is only one kernel-source package.  However, you can
HX> build-depend on the various kernel-headers packages in order to
HX> build the modules.

I was under the impression that kernel-headers-x.y.z wasn't sufficient 
to build a module.  Is it in fact enough to use the kernel headers to
build the kernel modules from the source package?  How?  (It doesn't
seem like 'make-kpkg modules' would work here.)

 DZM> (And is there some way to express that I build-depend on either
 DZM> i2c-modules-source or kernel-source for kernel 2.4.0 or newer?
 DZM> I can't think of a good way to do this with the current Debian
 DZM> kernel source setup...)
HX> 
HX> You don't want to do that.  Modules are very peculiar things, you
HX> must always depend on the exact version, e.g.,
HX> kernel-headers-2.4.3-386.

I think I'm really unclear on what you're saying.  So: I have the
lm-sensors source package (lm-sensors.orig.tar.gz, ...diff.gz, and
...dsc).  I unpack it.  Right now, debian/control lists no
dependencies on any kernel headers.  debian/rules builds the
user-space packages, and creates an lm-sensors-source package
containing a tarball which, when unpacked, contains the Debian source
tree needed to build the modules.

The user unpacks the tarball and runs make-kpkg modules.  This builds
the tree in $(MODULES_LOC)/lm-sensors.  That package lists debhelper
in its build dependencies, but nothing else.  (And the issue I alluded 
to here is that you need any 2.4 kernel headers, or i2c-modules-source 
unpacked.)

Is this all correct?  It seems like the best way to go about things in 
the current scheme, though it fails to build per-kernel modules for
the stock kernels...

-- 
David Maze         dmaze@debian.org      http://people.debian.org/~dmaze/
"Theoretical politics is interesting.  Politicking should be illegal."
	-- Abra Mitchell