Jon Masters wrote:
You *have* to actually build the kernel with whichever configuration file you eventually figure out Fedora 3 is using. The kbuild modules process now requires a copy of the actual object files - it's not just sufficient to have a config file and headers installed somewhere. This is partly because the extra linking stages for modules really want some symbols defined during a kernel build.
The more I learn about kbuild, the more I think it's a step backwards from the traditional makefile method.
I believe it is an absolute requirement for every Linux distro to be able to build modules for the distributed kernel without having to recompile the kernel itself.
It's bad enough that the kernel developers don't care about backward compatibility or want to provide a binary API, but hardware vendors can at least deal with those situations. But now the Fedora developers want HW vendors to tell their customers that they all need to recompile the kernel as well? What's the point in distributing a compiled kernel at all, then? Fedora may as well just compile the kernel during installation. At least that way, everything the user needs to add external modules will already be there.
-- Kernelnewbies: Help each other learn about the Linux kernel. Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/kernelnewbies/ FAQ: http://kernelnewbies.org/faq/
