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Proper way for vendors to build deb packages of kernels.



Currently the raspberry pi foundation build their kernel and firmware into the same package in a way that does not work with dkms or generally integrate with Debian stuff. I've recently been talking to shiftplusone (who works for them) about the possibility of improving this.

Currently i'm aware of three ways of building deb packaged kernels.

1: modify the Debian "linux" source package
2: use make deb-pkg
3: use make-kpkg

Option 1 can be made to work and probablly gives the closest experiance to kernels actually from Debian but it's a PITA, especially if there are a large number of changes from the source tree Debian uses. We do produce kernel package from a mashup of the Debian "linux" source package and the raspberry pi foundation's git tree but they are a pain to update and so tend to be updated far less frequently than the raspberry pi foundation's kernels.

Option 2 doesn't seem able to produce source packages, so it's ok for packages built for yourself but no so good for stuff you are going to distribute (much easier to track license compliance if you have a corresponding source package for every deb).

Option 3 also doesn't seem able to produce source packages and furthermore seems to be rather undermaintained (the readme for example still references libc5)

Does anyone have any other suggestions on what the best way for a vendor to take a kernel source tree (not debian derived) and produce deb packages and a debian source package from it?


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