Re: alsa and modutils

[David Z Maze <dmaze@MIT.EDU>]

David A Rogers <darogers@xnet.com> writes:
DAR> On 14 Dec 2000, David Z Maze wrote:
 DZM> Christoph Simon <ciccio@prestonet.com.br> writes:
  CS> It seems that kernels and the alsa driver like to live in
  CS> certain directories. I assume here, you do have the kernel
  CS> sources comiled and installed (BTW, why aren't you using the
  CS> latest?). The kernel sources should be in
  CS> "/usr/src/linux-<version>"; then, there should be a link
  CS> "/usr/src/linux" just to that directory.
 DZM> 
 DZM> This isn't necessary (and is arguably a poor idea) under Debian.
DAR> 
DAR> OK.  I'll bite.  Do you think it's a bad idea to have the kernel
DAR> sources under /usr/src, or bad to have a soft link from
DAR> /usr/src/linux to the kernel source base dir?  And why is it bad?

I don't think it's necessarily a poor idea to have source under
/usr/src, but my understanding is that everything under /usr with the
exception of everything under /usr/local is in the realm of dpkg.
This policy suggests that builds should happen in places other than
/usr/src.  In turn, this philosophy conflicts with current practice
WRT kernel modules.  <shrug>

Creating the symlink in /usr/src/linux probably *is* a bad idea.  I
have three different kernel source trees on this machine; which one
gets to be /usr/src/linux?  What happens when you're trying to build
modules if /usr/src/linux doesn't point where you want it to?
make-kpkg deals with this effectively without trying to manage a
symlink, which is useful.

Looked at another way, creating the symlink now gives you two
"blessed" sets of kernel includes, in /usr/include/linux and
/usr/src/linux/include/linux, but it's possible for a particular build 
for *both* to be wrong.  Adding confusion like this seems like poor
policy.

-- 
David Maze             dmaze@mit.edu          http://www.mit.edu/~dmaze/
"Theoretical politics is interesting.  Politicking should be illegal."
	-- Abra Mitchell