Re: please revert commit ce8556cca6 "kbuild: verify that $DEPMOD is installed" introduced in v4.18.4.

[Randy Dunlap]

On 08/22/2018 11:53 AM, H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:
> This patch requires that /sbin/depmod is installed and installable on
> the build host.
> 
> But not all build hosts for cross compiling Linux are Linux systems
> and are able to provide a working port of depmod, especially at the
> file patch /sbin/depmod.
> 
> I use, for example, a Darwin system to cross compile Linux and I run
> depmod -a on the embedded system once, after installing a new Linux
> kernel there.
> 
> I have no problem with seeing a warning, but aborting the build process
> is IMHO a bad idea since the previous behaviour didn't harm many people
> as far as I see. Probably 99% of people compiling Linux kernels do that
> on Linux and 99% of those have depmod installed for optimal operation of
> their build host. So IMHO printing the warning is good enough.

Thanks for the report and sorry about the problem.

I'm OK with changing the error to a warning.
Does the patch below work for you?

thanks.
---
From: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

When $DEPMOD is not found, only print a warning instead of exiting
with an error message and error status.

E.g.:
Warning: 'make modules_install' requires /sbin/depmod. Please install it.
This is probably in the kmod package.
../scripts/depmod.sh: line 44: /sbin/depmod: No such file or directory
make[1]: *** [/home/rdunlap/lnx/lnx-418/Makefile:1244: _modinst_post] Error 127
make: *** [Makefile:146: sub-make] Error 2

Signed-off-by: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Reported-by: H. Nikolaus Schaller <hns@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
 scripts/depmod.sh |    3 +--
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 2 deletions(-)

--- lnx-418.orig/scripts/depmod.sh
+++ lnx-418/scripts/depmod.sh
@@ -15,9 +15,8 @@ if ! test -r System.map ; then
 fi
 
 if [ -z $(command -v $DEPMOD) ]; then
-	echo "'make modules_install' requires $DEPMOD. Please install it." >&2
+	echo "Warning: 'make modules_install' requires $DEPMOD. Please install it." >&2
 	echo "This is probably in the kmod package." >&2
-	exit 1
 fi
 
 # older versions of depmod require the version string to start with three