Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 50689
missing .config and/or modversions.h in final package
Last modified: 2007-04-18 12:35:24 EDT
Description of Problem: it would be really nice to have a copy of /usr/src/linux/.config and ...include/modversions.h in the final kernel package in order to rebuild kernel modules without having to rebuild the whole kernel. obviously they should be in /boot alongside the kernels so that multiple versions of kernel don't clash.
(kernel-headers puts #error directive in modversions.h and i think that kernel-source should pretty much do the same...directing hackers to get the right modversions output from /boot/vmlinuz-NNN-modversions.h)
Well the "official" solution (the one Linus recommends) and that we implement is the following: ALWAYS build external modules with the include path pointing to: -I/lib/modules/`uname -r`/build/include and that just works. Our modversions.h in the kernel-source is ready to work for any kernel you boot, and NO module should ever use .config but config.h, which is also correct for ANY kernel you boot. This just works. I've done it for dozens of modules. Even VMWare works this way. All other distros work this way......
ah. thanks. that bit of lore escaped me...was not apparent from the instructions at http://scyld.com/expert/modules.html and wasn't easy to spot from the contents of netdrivers-2.1.7-1.src.rpm ... also, the makefile at http://aureal.sourceforge.net is broken and there's version skew between current sound drivers and what's available there. *sigh*
Can't convince them all at once ;) Seriously this "official" Linus verdict is over a year old and even Red Hat Linux 7.0 conformed to it... Oh well. I'm closing this as "NOTABUG" as it's actually "NOTOURBUG" but that doesn't exist. If you object to that, or have more problems with this issue, feel free to reopen the bug.