Re: Debian Specialities (fwd)
On 2 Jan 1997, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
srivasta > In this case, I don't think we should ``get in line'' with
srivasta > other distributions, since the current Debian practice is an
srivasta > improvement.
I have seen a couple of problems in the past with the improvement.
srivasta > The dosemu maintainer has to add /usr/src/linux/include to the
srivasta > CFLAGS while compiling dosemu, and make sure that a
srivasta > kernel-{header,source}-X.XX package is installed. The rest of us
srivasta > (99.99% of the installation) then does not have to bother with
srivasta > anythng but lib*-dev.
Dosemu autodetects the kernel version and tries to locate the kernel
sources through the symlinks in /usr/include. All sorts of strange things
happened until I overrode the kernel source detection.
A number of other kernel related packages rest their compilation on the
presence of those symlinks. I am the maintainer of most of those kernel
related packages.
srivasta > A more detailed defence of out practice follows.
I know the text but I think this is again an issue where Debian tries
to outsmart the rest of the Linux World and hurts itself in the process.
I and many other developers in the Linux world are used to cope with
recent kernel versions and the tricks they might play with
/usr/include/xxx. There is the custom to take advantage of those links and
to assume that they accurately point to the most recent kernel version and
not to some past "stable" version.
That does not work under Debian and thus we have a host of problems with
users trying to do kernel dependant things under Debian that wont work.
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