Am 08.03.2010 10:56, schrieb James Rayner:
Apparently it's taken me 2 months to notice this because I've been building my own kernel, but I'll ask anyway... The kernel headers required to build kernel modules have been put in a separate package "kernel26-headers". We don't separate dev headers for anything else - why is this different?
They are 27MB big and most people never need them. The most important argument however is that the PKGBUILD is now much easier to read - all the "crappy" stuff has moved to its own function.
Second, linux-api-headers used to be called "kernel-headers" and now there's easily 100 posts on the forum that say "the headers don't need to match the kernel" - which are all now completely incorrect.
The reason this package was renamed is just that: People kept complaining about things they didn't understand. Now, the package doesn't have the name "kernel" in it, people still don't understand the package, but they stopped complaining.