Re: Bug#43928: libc and kernel source policy
This should certainly be discussed with the libc maintainers before
making such a proposal. I am sure that they did not take the decision
lightly.
<<
The kernel headers don't change much these days on stable releases, yet
the Debian libc packages continue to carry with them full sets of kernel
headers (whatever somebody has _manually_ copied into place as
/usr/include/{linux,asm,scsi,etc} on the system building glibc).
That's false, the headers are copied from
$(LINUX_SOURCE)/include/{asm,linux}, which is never /usr/include.
<<
Why in the heck do we have kernel-headers packages in Debian? Why
do we have kernel-source packages? It seems to me that if building
libc _requires_ a particular set of kernel include files (which I
consider to be dubious) why not have glibc _depend_ on a particular
kernel-headers-xxx package? Why not have kernel headers provide
/usr/include/{linux,asm,scsi,etc} (or at least put in symlinks
for them pointing to /usr/src/kernel-headers-xxx)?
At this moment, kernel-headers packages exist for probably just
building glibc, having a fixed place for the headers makes it
possible for glibc to be autobuilt or at least makes it easier for
the person building it.
We already did the libc6-dev depends on kernel-headers-x.x.x method,
there were countless bugs filed against libc6-dev by idiots who
didn't understand why when they upgraded their kernel that libc6-dev
still wanted "old" kernel headers. Finally the kernel-package and
glibc maintainers got fed up and just copied the headers directly
into libc6-dev.
<<
That would be a great service to kernel hackers, libc hackers, and
mirror maintainers (since libc would no longer have to carry around
the extra baggage of kernel headers).
kernel hackers do not need /usr/include/{asm,linux} to point to their
current kernel source. They do not work in userspace.
libc hackers don't need that either, since they have --with-headers.
Incidentally, I don't think policy has any business telling me what
goes in /usr/include (besides not to put non-headers there by
reference of the FHS).
--
Joel Klecker (aka Espy) Debian GNU/Linux Developer
<URL:mailto:jk@espy.org> <URL:mailto:espy@debian.org>
<URL:http://web.espy.org/> <URL:http://www.debian.org/>
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