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Re: Possibilities for a special Azure or cloud Linux package



On Fri, 2017-11-17 at 16:07 +0100, Bastian Blank wrote:
> Hi kernel team
> 
> We at credativ are responsible for maintaining the Azure cloud images.
> We got asked by Microsoft to explore the possibilities of introducing a
> specialised Linux image for this plattform into Debian.  The main
> enhancements we look at would be:
> - faster boot of the instance,
> - smaller memory footprint of the running kernel, and
> - new features.

We've spent the last decade slowly moving away from platform-specific
to generic multiplatform kernels on ARM (and, to a lesser extent, x86).
 I strongly disagree with adding a new flavour that would be specific
to one vendor's platform.

However, if it is possible to create a single flavour that provides
those sorts of enhancements for multiple cloud platforms, I think that
would be worthwhile.

> We don't want to introduce a new source package as was done for
> grsecurity.  This may work, as Microsoft mainly targets the latest
> kernel, which is not always nice.
> 
> That's why I would like to add such an image as a featureset to the main
> Linux package.  This will allow us to look at the downsides of the
> approach in terms of maintenance overhead, build time, archive space
> etc.  If it does not work: disabling a featureset is easy.
> 
> As first step we will not add patches, so the only thing that can break
> is the config.  But just in case I'll propose the following rules for
> patches:
> - must be in Linus tree,
> - must be in a subsystem maintainers tree, or
> - are in linux-next (not sure about this one).

Those are basically the same criteria we normally use, so I don't
understand your desire to add a featureset.

Ben.

> Would it be okay with you if we try this?  Do you see other problem with
> such an approach?
> 
> Bastian
> 
-- 
Ben Hutchings
Teamwork is essential - it allows you to blame someone else.

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