Re: Building additional kernel drivers with Debian kernel-source
* Otto Wyss wrote:
> > For 2.6 it will work with kernel-headers-2.6.x. It contains the kbuild
> > environment (partially in an extra package kernel-kbuild-2.6-x, on which
> > the kernel-headers packages for 2.6 depend).
>
> Unfortunately there's _no_ kernel-kbuild-2.6.7 package, there are only
> for 2.6.5 and 2.6.6. On the other side there isn't a kernel-image-2.6.6
> nor -2.6.5 while there is a kernel-source-2.6.7 and -2.6.6.
No, if you truely want to understand the situation I suggest examining the
packages yourself.
For each and every kernel version $VER there is a kernel-headers-$VER package.
This is true for 2.4 and 2.6 kernels and these packages contain the header
files, which you need to build external modules. kernel-build-2.4.x is
nothing more than a dependency on all kernel-headers-2.4.x-extra, where extra
are the arch specific kernel header versions.
To make kernel development easier, kbuild was invented. Don't ask me what
exactly it does in detail. One beneift is, that it incorporates all kernel
module building logic, so that module developers just have to set some
variables and then call a Makefile from the kernel. Which is exactly what the
module you want to build does.
kbuild is a collection of Makefiles and scripts. The Makefile stuff is
incorporated in the kernel-headers-2.6.x packages, while the scripts (being
API stable and arch independant) are in a separate package kernel-kbuild-2.6
on which the kernel-headers-2.6.x pakcages depend. So this kbuild stuff is
packaged for 2.6 kernels, and you get it for free and automatically and
magically by installing the appropriate kernel-headers-2.6.x package. For 2.4
this stuff is not packaged, so the module building logic must be present in
the corresponding module's Makefile and if it isn't, you can't build it
against kernel-headers packages for 2.4.
> IMO it would make sense to either have all releated packages of a kernel
> version or none at all. I hope when Debian/sarge is released this is
> corrected.
They are. Of course we do not mirror each and every kernel version but only
the latest few, as you might guess is reasonable considering the space a
single version with all arch and variants consumes.
Sebastian
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