[Novalug] Kernel Compiles

[jecottrell3 at comcast.net]

Reading postings like this makes me cringe at all the times I have agreed with Alan.

Dude .... rpmbuild is a Beautiful Thing. The ability to capture the exact steps that were used to patch, configure, and build a piece of software are Priceless. What WAS rather flakily documented were the steps needed to build and install various kernels and modules. The steps/phases have changed somewhat thru the ages, and I wonder whether 'mrproper' is even strictly necessary.

I would rather build my kernels via a SRPM than by unpacking and hacking on the raw source distribution. And this method also applies to other RPM distros, such as SuSE and Mandr{ake,iva}. I know little of deb-src's, but I assume they carry the patch/config/build info in a similar way.

You can always open up the SRPM hack on it, and then use the standard mechanism to rebuild things. It's much easier to define yourself in terms of Deviations from a Standard than from scratch.

If RedHat is guilty of anything at all, it is in downplaying the process...I think they either mildly discourage the practice of building your own kernels, or it's a side effort of their Main Practice.

As a Supporter of Open Source, they want to provide you with the Source, but as a Vendor, they'd really prefer that you not take them up on the offer, as modified software is harder to support.

JIM

----- Original Message -----
From: "Alan Grimes" <agrimes at speakeasy.net>
Cc: novalug at calypso.tux.org
Sent: Tuesday, April 13, 2010 9:17:32 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re: [Novalug] Kernel Compiles

chrome://messenger/locale/messengercompose/composeMsgs.properties:
> (top posting because it mua limitations)
> 
> Way late Ti the thread. I would love a quick talk at a meeting about  
> this. I fought with this and figured it out when I moved to Fedora but  
> forget the specifics. 18 months ago I was able to use /use/src/linux*  
> w Ubuntu. I understand the change but for old timers I admit things  
> change for the better buy I haven't found the list/site to read to  
> inform us of changes so we can adopt the 'new' way

=P

Now all I gotta do is get you to start chanting "Show me the docs!"
along with me. =P

> On Apr 12, 2010, at 8:15 PM, "Bryan J. Smith" <b.j.smith at ieee.org>  
> wrote:

>> Most specifically, there has been no option to build out of
>> /usr/src/linux[-2.x] for a long time.  There is a very real reason
>> for this, among other things, and why the arch-specific RPM
>> with the /usr/src/linux[-2.x] tree was removed.

>> This is not a Red Hat-only thing, despite what people claim.
>> Many different systems have their proper kernel built tree to
>> avoid various issues and make modules maintainable.

Do you realize what this means?

The one and only thing Linux had going for it was that, in principle,
you could monkey around in any source code in the system. Now, that
distribution of linux at least, has nothing going for it whatsoever. =P


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