Hi, I am no kernel developer, but would like to fix the build system of certain third party external kernel modules (under GPL). Although they use the linux makefiles, there are problems with symbol versioning. The external packages build system, as usual, has a main Makefile which causes recursive calls of 'make' in each subdirectory. There are two modules in the package, built in different subdirectories, whose Makefiles each cause a call of 'make' with the Makefile of linux for building the modules. Problem (on kernel linux-2.6.24-486, also on linux-2.6.18-686, both from current Debian Stable): When the second module is built, the linux modpost program reads 'Module.symvers' files only from the second modules directory and from the linux source directory. The second module uses symbols exported by the first module, but their versions are in 'Module.symvers' in the directory of the first module, so they are not read by modpost in this step. Consequently, modpost warns about undefined symbols and produces a <modulename>.mod.c file lacking these symbols; after linking, inserting the module taints the kernel. I can work around the problem by copying 'Module.symvers' from the first modules directory into the second modules directory and building again. How is such a situation (modules built in different directories, second depends on the first) supposed to be handled correctly? Olaf -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kbuild" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
