[arch-dev-public] Consensus: DKMS modules

[Maxime Gauduin]

On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 1:06 AM, Allan McRae <allan at archlinux.org> wrote:

> On 14/03/16 09:07, Allan McRae wrote:
> > On 13/03/16 00:52, Sébastien Luttringer wrote:
> >> Please note that as an ideal target, I would have all our kernel modules
> >> available via dkms _and_ via prebuilt modules for each kernel flavor we
> >> provide. I read on the dev IRC that few modules could only be shipped
> from
> >> sources. Not sure of that btw.
> >>
> >> For example, we could, for simplicity says that we provide pre-built
> modules
> >> only for the main kernel and dkms for all others kernels.
> >>
> >> What I would like is a team consensus/decision on how we handle kernel
> oot
> >> modules not complains directed on virtualbox only.
> >
> >
> > I vote for binary modules for all kernels in [core] and dkms versions.
> > Kernels outside of [core] can have binary modules provided at the
> > maintainer's choice.
> >
>
> We are going to need more opinions here to build a consensus...
>
> A
>

Having used the ck kernel for years, and now zen, I am somehow biased and
in favor of DKMS everywhere, that and it really puts a burden on our kernel
maintainers having to build all our OOT modules with every upgrade. It
really doesn't take that much time to build them, even on modest machines
(got nvidia, bbswitch, vboxhost and cdemu on my laptop). Also I know some
people disagree, but kernel headers don't take that much space, bandwidth
may be another story though.

That being said, I feel that what Sebastien proposed, ie having built
modules only for linux and linux-lts, and DKMS everywhere else would be a
good compromise IMHO.

Cheers,
--
Maxime