Re: kernel headers---FAQ

[Avery Pennarun <apenwarr@worldvisions.ca>]

Okay, first of all, I apologize because I haven't been able to read every
message on this topic.

I want to say that I can understand and basically agree with Debian's method
of requiring a particular set of kernel headers to be installed and used.  I
can even sort of see why the kernel-headers package has been separated out
of the libc package, and that this has led to some confusion.

I just have one simple complaint:  the kernel-headers package refuses to
configure if I already have a locally-installed kernel in /usr/src/linux.

Okay, so maybe it's new Debian policy that /usr/src is owned by Debian. 
Besides mentioning the fact that people aren't going to like this, I'm going
to say only that _I_ myself am going to jolly well go on using /usr/src
myself no matter what you say.  (I also know what I'm doing.  Many people
would be well advised to follow the instructions.)

The real question here is why kernel-headers and kernel-source bother to
make the /usr/src/linux symlink at all, and worse still, fail when they
can't do it.  As far as I can tell, NOTHING in debian refers to
/usr/src/linux.  To wit:

	$ ls -ld /usr/include/{linux,asm}
	... /usr/include/asm -> /usr/src/linux-2.0.32/include/asm
	... /usr/include/linux -> /usr/src/linux-2.0.32/include/linux
	
This is good, and as it should be.  If I install my own kernel sources in
/usr/src/linux-2.0.32, and then install kernel-source-2.0.32_*.deb, I
deserve what I get.

But why must the packages fiddle with /usr/src/linux itself?  People
manually installing a kernel will try to put it there.  People may overwrite
debian files with their kernel by accident.  No debian tools I know of need
that link.  And now I can't upgrade libc6 if I've unpacked a kernel!

This is going to confuse users.

Avery


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