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.
> I wish to change Debian policy regarding libc and the kernel sources.
> The document /usr/share/doc/libc6/FAQ.Debian.gz states:
>
> Occasionally, changes in the kernel headers cause problems with the
> compilation of libc and of programs that use libc. To ensure that users
> are not affected by these problems, we configure libc to use the headers
> from a kernel that is known to work with libc and the programs that
> depend on stable kernel headers.
>
> 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).
>
> 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
Kernel-headers packages might be unnecessary, given your argument.
Kernel-source, though: what planet are you on?
> 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)?
Again, let's hear what the libc guys have to say before being too
radical.
> 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).
Not necessarily.
Julian
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Julian Gilbey, Dept of Maths, QMW, Univ. of London. J.D.Gilbey@qmw.ac.uk
Debian GNU/Linux Developer, see http://www.debian.org/~jdg
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