Maintaining kernel source in sarge

[Martin Schulze <joey@infodrom.org>]

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.

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.

Hence, it is important that when a new kernel is added (e.g. for
security reasons) an older package is removed *and* all relevant
modules packages are rebuilt and included as well.

I wonder if there are ways and efforts to improve the situation for sarge.

I would be glad if somebody could investigate the modules situation
and describe which modules packages require which kernel versions
(and/or depend on which other packages).

I also wonder if there are efforts in progress to unify the kernel
source through more than two architectures?  This would require a
group or architecture maintainers (current kernel package mantainers)
to work collaboratively towards this goal.

Regards,

	Joey

-- 
Ten years and still binary compatible.  -- XFree86

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