Re: [PATCH 3/4] kbuild: slim down package for building external modules

[Nicolas Schier]

On Tue, Feb 18, 2025 at 01:25:38PM -0700, Jeffrey Hugo wrote:
> On 7/27/2024 1:42 AM, Masahiro Yamada wrote:
> > Exclude directories and files unnecessary for building external modules:
> > 
> >   - include/config/  (except include/config/auto.conf)
> >   - scripts/atomic/
> >   - scripts/dtc/
> >   - scripts/kconfig/
> >   - scripts/mod/mk_elfconfig
> >   - scripts/package/
> >   - scripts/unifdef
> >   - .config
> 
> Please revert this (the removal of .config).
> 
> I got some strange reports that our external module install broke, and
> traced it to this change.  Our external module references the .config
> because we have different logic for the build depending on if other, related
> modules are present or not.
> 
> Also, it looks like this broke DKMS for some configurations, which not only
> impacts DKMS itself [1] but also downstream projects [2].
> 
> While DKMS may be updated going forward to avoid this issue, there are
> plenty of affected version out in the wild.
> 
> Also, I haven't surveyed every distro, but it looks like Ubuntu still
> packages the .config with their headers in their upcoming "Plucky" release
> based on 6.12.  I suspect they wouldn't do that if they didn't feel it was
> needed/useful.
> 
> -Jeff
> 
> [1]: https://github.com/dell/dkms/issues/464
> [2]: https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/issues/1654

Hi Jeff,

do you know the related thread [1]?  According to the last mail, DKMS
has fixed its issue already in December.

Kind regards,
Nicolas

[1]: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-kbuild/CAK7LNARqEOVOzP5vdUVF0KxQBNb9xtYs-COSXXWDMpBzGaLGow@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/T/#m95f48caf46357a41c1df5e038e227a01ab89dbda