On Thursday 05 July 2007 20:11:36 Randy Dunlap wrote: > On Thu, 5 Jul 2007 16:09:15 -0600 Elyse M. Grasso wrote: > > On Thursday 05 July 2007, you wrote: > > > On Thursday 05 July 2007 13:12:35 Elyse M. Grasso wrote: > > > > Is there something I could do to help? It's been years since I > > > > programmed C, but I'm a former librarian, current configuration > > > > management tools consultant. I write good standards-compliant HTML > > > > and XHTML, and Perl is > > > > my > > > > > > life these days. > > > > > > > > Point me at something where I won't be duplicating effort and I'll > > > > take a look at it. > > > > > > Sure. > > > > > > Could you start by subscribing to linux-doc? (Info at > > > http://vger.kernel.org/vger-lists.html) We can discuss it at length > > > over there. > > > > > > Thanks, > > > > > > Rob > > > -- > > > > OK I've joined. I hope this was the right one, the group description > > says: > > > > Old linux documentation forum (?) > > Yes, this is it. Maybe we can get that phrase fixed... Let's earn a new title and then worry about it. :) Ok, some pending stuff I posted to the mailing list and should probably follow up on to get actually merged: Attached is a headers_install.txt that David Woodhouse acked (and tweaked slightly) on the list. I haven't pushed it because I'm not sure where in Documentation it should go. Here are two Documentation cleanup patches from back when I was trying to reorganize that as the One True Place Kernel Documenation Should Live (tm), which I've since realized it can't be, but cleanup is good anyway. All these do is move files around to less insane places: http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0705.3/2925.html http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0705.3/2924.html Here's how to get the kernel to produce one big file per "make htmldocs" book rather than lots of little ones. I have a TODO item to make this have two targets ("make htmldocs" and "make htmldocs-nochunks" or some such) to preserve both kinds of behavior, but it's not at the top of the todo list until I figure out a stable way of linking into the middle of either result: http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0705.3/2056.html So there's some of my pending stuff, already published but not merged, which I need to follow up on... Rob -- "One of my most productive days was throwing away 1000 lines of code." - Ken Thompson.
Exporting kernel headers for use by userspace ============================================= The "make headers_install" command exports the kernel's header files in a form suitable for use by userspace programs. The linux kernel's exported header files describe the API for user space programs attempting to use kernel services. These kernel header files are used by the system's C library (such as glibc or uClibc) to define available system calls, as well as constants and structures to be used with these system calls. The C library's header files include the kernel header files from the "linux" subdirectory. The system's libc headers are usually installed at the default location /usr/include and the kernel headers in subdirectories under that (most notably /usr/include/linux and /usr/include/asm). Kernel headers are backwards compatible, but not forwards compatible. This means that a program built against a C library using older kernel headers should run on a newer kernel (although it may not have access to new features), but a program built against newer kernel headers may not work on an older kernel. The "make headers_install" command can be run in the top level directory of the kernel source code (or using a standard out-of-tree build). It takes two optional arguments: make headers_install ARCH=i386 INSTALL_HDR_PATH=/usr/include ARCH indicates which architecture to produce headers for, and defaults to the current architecture. The linux/asm directory of the exported kernel headers is platform-specific, to see a complete list of supported architectures use the command: ls -d include/asm-* | sed 's/.*-//' INSTALL_HDR_PATH indicates where to install the headers. It defaults to "./usr/include". The command "make headers_install_all" exports headers for all architectures simultaneously. (This is mostly of interest to distribution maintainers, who create an architecture-independent tarball from the resulting include directory.) Remember to provide the appropriate linux/asm directory via "mv" or "ln -s" before building a C library with headers exported this way. The kernel header export infrastructure is maintained by David Woodhouse <dwmw2@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>.
