Re: Debian should not modify the kernels!
Osamu Aoki <osamu@debian.org> wrote:
>
> 2) I was not suggesting very fine grained "modular" patch for each issues.
> I was expecting something like 3-4 stage patches.
>
> * 1st big patch: cramfs etc. which are essential to be Debian kernel
> * 2nd big patch: basic bug fixes. (No feature change, something you
> may have got from upstream pre release patch.)
> * 3rd big patch: basic feature fix. (IPsec and all others which is
> generally good and nice for most users.)
> * 4th big patch: Whatever you did at last minutes :-)
>
> The order of above is not essential for me. It should apply clean
> though.
No this is still a lot of work for very little gain.
The problem is that everytime a change is made in the first patch, all
the other three will have to be fixed and rengenerated.
> If you make your patch somewhat more split into "staged" manner (yes, I
> am not asking "modular"), then it is easier for specialty patch
> maintenance become easy. After all those specialty patch user may no
> need features needed by most user but he certainly expects having cramfs
> and other standard features of Debian.
Very few people really need cramfs if they're building custom kernels.
This is because initrd only makes sense when you're building for a
large number of machines. If you're building a custom kernel, just
compile in all the drivers you need for mounting root and that's that.
On the other hand, the security fixes are usually easy to extract and
well documented.
> If you claim making simple 3-4 stage patch maintenance "unmaintainable
> due to the complex relationships between patches", it is certainly
> unmaintainable for other "patch" package maintainer or any one try to
> apply patch to keep up with you.
Keeping up with the Debian tree is much the same as keeping up with
any other kernel tree. The answer is to use a proper revision control
system.
--
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Email: Herbert Xu ~{PmV>HI~} <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>
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