On Thu, 27 Jul 2000, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote:
>
> May I suggest one slight change to this list? /usr/src/linux should be
> a symlink to the header files of whatever kernel is being booted by
> default. So you can compile your own kernel in your own home directory,
> but when you install your own kernel as the default boot kernel,
> /usr/src/linux should point to the header files of that kernel. As you
> say, it requres root to _install_ your own kernel, and that point, you
> can point /usr/src/linux at the appropriate place.
No.
It still means that the kernel header files would have to be source-level
backwards compatible forever. Something which hasn't been true in the
past, and I don't want to be true in the future either. It's been damn
painful to not be able to clean stuff up because some user-level setup is
wrong.
> The problem is that unless you are trying to say that you want to outlaw
> external source packages which generate kernel modules, there needs to
> be some way for such packages to be able to find the kernel header
> files.
Yes. By hand. By the maintainer. And _independently_ of what random user
Joe Blow has on his particular installation.
Because it's not unreasonable AT ALL to have those packages be compiled
with newer header files than the user even has access to. Imagine a ext2
library that wants to support new features of the filesystem, compiled on
a box that only has 2.2.13 installed. Neve rever had anything newer.
Should that newer source package dumb itself down to 2.2.13 level, so that
the e2fsck doesn't know how to handle new filesystems? Sure, the user
obviously isn't using them _now_, but wouldn't it be a lot nicer if you
just had a source tree that ended up generating the same binary that you
as the maintainer has? With all the new features, just suppressed by the
fact that it ends up running on a old-style filesystem image..
Trust me, it's STUPID to have user-level binaries that end up different
depending on what machine they were compiled on. We've had exactly that
happen, and it's a BUG. It's nasty to debug.
Think about it. You have machine X and machine Y, and they both have the
ext2-programs compiled with the same compiler from the same sources with
the same libraries. Would you _really_ consider it acceptable if they act
differently?
I don't. And that is why I will continue to maintain that it is WRONG to
have that symlink. No ifs, buts of other crap. Just face reality.
Linus
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