[OpenAFS-devel] Linux Kernel Module build question

[Derek Atkins]

Jeremy Katz <katzj@linuxpower.org> writes:

> The problem isn't so much the hassle, it's the amount of build root
> contamination which is possible if something goes awry. =\  Build root
> pollution bad, reproducibility of builds good.  

What kind of build-root contamination do you mean?  I suppose that,
yes, one could actually change things in the base system while running
as root, but that doesn't mean one _HAS_ to do so.  And I can
certainly reproduce all my builds of OpenAFS... and I've _ALWAYS_ done
it as root.

> > I am still installing modules in /usr/vice/etc/modload.  I don't want
> > to have multiple user-space packages, just multiple kernel-modules.
> 
> Exactly.

But I do also want to support multiple kernels.  Remember that I'm not
building to a particular distribution like you are, where you control
the whole build process.  I'm building for a general audience.  That
means that I don't necessarily know what version of the kernel they've
got ahead of time, so I want to cover all my based.  That means I want
to build for every released kernel for that OS.

[snip]

> Then, instead of just running the rpm build once, you run the first time
> to build all of the base packages and then build additional times for
> each subarchitecture by rebuilding the SRPM with a --target, eg
> 
> rpm -ba openafs.spec # get initial SRPM and base package
> rpm --rebuild openafs.src.rpm --target=i586
> rpm --rebuild openafs.src.rpm --target=i686

Now, _THIS_ would be considered, IMHO, build-root contamination...  Or
you have to be very careful to only build the openafs-kernel modules
for the other platforms.  Me, I'd just rather have one package that
contained ALL the modules and just be intelligent about which one
get's loaded.  Much easier for the user, IMHO.  They don't have to
figure out which module-package to install.

> HTH,
> 
> Jeremy

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
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