Re: Bug#336732: /lib/modules/*/build symlink should be ignored when checking if kernel is installed

[Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr>]

On Sun, Nov 06, 2005 at 07:00:50PM +0100, Frans Pop wrote:
> On Sunday 06 November 2005 18:06, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> >         Err, kernel-package provides a public API. Anything that uses
> >  kernel-package should either use the public API, convince the API or
> >  behaviour to change, or accommodate any changes to the internals of
> >  kernel-package.
> 
> I think at this point this discussion would benefit greatly from the input 
> of some other members in the kernel team, if only to confirm that the 
> views set down by Sven are supported by the whole team.

Andres Salomon kind of agreed with me on irc, as did Martin and Bastian i think.

Anyway let's be logical on this :

  Manoj's argument : 

    the build symlink is currently buggy, and should be either part of the
    kernel-image package or created at kernel-image install time.


  Pro : Well, i will let manoj's reply here, didn't find any pro item myself.

  Con : doesn't allow building out of tree module without installing
    linux-image for every flavour we want to build too, and as we were trying to
    make this policy for module builds ...

  Martin's solution : instead of looking at only /lib/modules/<version> to see
  if modules where installed, actually do a find /lib/modules/<version> -name
  \*.ko, and search for real modules.

  Official kernel have no problem here, since the abi versioning is enough to
  ensure that the modules will not break, which is what Manoj is trying to
  make sure about at this point.

  Pro : Well, the current kernel packages are no more broken by the new k-p
  upload, and build works as it is intented. Thsi is probably a one line fix
  in k-p, and rather straightforward.

  Con : no real argument by Manoj here, apart from his /lib/modules/<version>
  should be owned uniquely by the kernel-image package, altough he obviously
  contradicts himself when he speaks about the nvidia and vmware modules.

There are other stuff involved, in that over the years, k-p has been more and
more losing touch with the reality of the official kernel packages, and that
Manoj feels this is not nice, but this has been going on since a long long
time, and my personal feeling is that we are all working to better this, but
the priority for debian has to go with the official kernels and their need.

Friendly,

Sven Luther