Re: Lobby this, somebody
On Wed, 28 Jan 1998 jdassen@wi.leidenuniv.nl wrote:
> The way Debian handles kernel includes is seriously correct. If you use the
> old symlink approach (/usr/include/{linux,asm}->/usr/src/linux) the
> definitions of <linux/*.h> and <asm/*.h> can be different from those that
> were used in the compilation of the C library. This can cause "interesting"
> effects.
It can perhaps cause interesting effects. However it doesn't have any
effects with other Linux/libc distributions (which work correctly both
with 2.0.x and 2.1.x kernels).
I don't see any problems in using nonstandard arrangements as long as it
doesn't break anything. However in this case it breaks application written
by following standard practices.
> :A2: In practice, most programs will not have this problem. However, when
> :you do run across one, you can just use -I/usr/src/linux/include when
> :compiling that specific program.
Having the current kernel sources in /usr/src/linux is _NOT_ a standard.
Not everybody have 50M of free disk space in the /usr (or root) partition
to have the kernel source tree there. Also there is no guarantee that
users arrange /usr/src/linux to point the new location. Why should they do
it since nothing depends on that.
The standard is that /usr/include/linux and /usr/include/asm point to the
current kernel source directory. If they move the sources somewhere else
they quickly learn to set up this link correctly. Maybe most users do this
by fixing /usr/src/linux but there is no fundamental reason to do it in
this way.
We can't change the Makefile to use -I/usr/src/linux simply because it
may break OSS in systems which follow the proper standards. We don't want
to risk that 90% of our customers encounter problems just because a group
of 10% wants to do things in their own special way.
However if somebody can give 110% foolproof method for detecting a Debian
system using this include practice intentionally, we will implement
autodetection for this in the Makefile. Otherwise all we can do is asking
users to fix the problem manually (as we currently do).
Best regards,
Hannu
-----
Hannu Savolainen (hannu@opensound.com)
http://www.fi.opensound.com/~hannu (personal)
http://www.opensound.com/oss.html (Open Sound System (OSS))
http://www.opensound.com/ossfree (OSS Free/TASD/VoxWare)
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