On Sun, Jan 26, 2003 at 03:46:30PM -0600, Kai Germaschewski wrote:
>
> That's not true. For example, how would an old external build system
> magically starting to compile modules as .ko without updating? How
> would it have added -DKBUILD_BASENAME and -DKBUILD_MODNAME, which
> are required by the new module code. And, how did they avoid subtle
> breakage like not giving the same switches on the command line?
> (This list goes on...)
>
I hear you, but these changes were easy enough to adapt to.
> Also, it's not true that they've been broken deliberately. As work
> progresses, breakage occurs, that's just a fact of live. However,
> introduction of __vermagic was not introduced in order to make live
> for maintainers of external modules harder, it was introduced since
> loading modules compiled with gcc3 into a kernel compiled with gcc2
> caused crashes for people.
>
Well, in this specific case an alternate solution was proposed that
would have solved any of the potential problems pointed out.
> Okay, you have a point here, there's still a bug. vermagic.o will be
> rebuilt when the version changes or any of the recorded config
> options change, but it doesn't pick up changes in the compiler
> version, if the new gcc has the same name.
>
> That's a bug for internal use as well, the patch below fixes it.
>
Fair enough.
> o One thing I do not understand at all: What is the problem with
> using the internal build system? It makes maintainance of external
> modules much easier than keeping track of what happens in the kernel
> and patching a private solution all the time.
>
My primary concern is compatibility with those kernels that do not use
kbuild or a different version of it. Ideally, one would want to use
the same build system for all possible kernel versions rather than use
Makefiles that attempt to pick the best choice. I guess I'm convinced
that the latter is the "best" solution to dealing with this problem at
this point, and I can live with that.
What's the most reliable way to tell if kbuild is available, and what
differences among kbuild versions will one have to look out for?
> I don't even see any license issues, first of all you don't even
> distribute it, the user who's building the module will already
> have it along with his kernel source. And if you're using it to
> compile (possibly binary) modules you want to distribute, you can
> just use it just like gcc without any further obligations, so no
> problem there either. (IANAL, of course)
>
I don't see any problems with kbuild, I was referring to vermagic.c.
-- christian zander zander@minion.de - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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