[Pkg-zfsonlinux-devel] Kernel image and OOT auto builder environment (Was: Using out of tree modules in d-i)?

[Aron Xu]

On Sat, May 25, 2013 at 2:45 AM, Turbo Fredriksson <turbo at bayour.com> wrote:
> On May 24, 2013, at 7:04 PM, Aron Xu wrote:
>
>> and help d-i people to handle the brokenness
>> if a change in kernel makes the OOT module does not build
>
> This should only happen when a new major version of the kernel comes
> out, which means it should only happen in unstable..
>
> And we could make it so that it is possible to make that particular
> OOT skipped (manually or automatically after a specified time), and
> hence won't be available for that run of d-i.
>
> But within a oldstable or stable kernel, only the Debian version changes,
> right, so...
>
>
> But if a kernel changes a lot and often in unstable, support for that
> specific OOT will be intermittent. Might not be a huge problem in unstable.
> Unwanted, but not a huge deal...
>
>> What I can think of is to do the trick in d-i, since it already has
>> the ability to retrieve and load udeb on the fly, and even prompt
>> users for missing firmware.
>
> Maybe even build them using dkms? I saw that you can make d-i build
> all packages... So adding a extra hook or something that sees that this
> is a OOT module, then get it's dkms package, build (to a .deb/.udeb
> which I have patches sent upstream for) it and use that...
>

It could be possible, but I don't think building it is acceptable,
because it means you must pull in everything of build-essential to the
d-i image, which is useless for most other people when they run d-i.

>
> But either way would mean that the d-i builder have to do the fixing,
> instead of a group of people (should be the responsibility of the
> OOT module maintainer(s)).
>
>> Such functionality may be reused so that
>> related udebs can be fetched and loaded when selected, and if all
>> effort failed just generate an error message.
>
> What if an OOT is a network module? Might be needed before the network
> is up to fetch it...
>

This is what I've said that d-i can ask users for firmware, and the
case is usually network drivers:
http://wiki.debian.org/Firmware

> And if it's included in the monolithic image, then it will be up to
> the d-i builder/uploader to make sure that the module is available,
> not a group of people...
>





-- 
Regards,
Aron Xu