Custom patched kernels in RPMFusion

[Jarod Wilson]

On Jan 08, 2009, at 20:17, Kevin Kofler wrote:

> Felix Kaechele wrote:
>> I already shared my idea of providing custom patched kernels in
>> RPMFusion with Thorsten and he said that it would be an interesting
>> thing to do. But I also, of course, want to know the opinion of the
>> other contributors as this is a decision that should be made by not  
>> only
>> a few people.
>
> Some concerns I have:
> * Some people will want to have more than one patch, so having  
> separate
> kernels with the separate patches won't make everyone happy, but  
> patches
> are often incompatible (or at least apparently incompatible, needing  
> manual
> merging), so making a single kernel with all the patches isn't going  
> to
> scale.
> * What about kmods? Building those for all the patched kernels will  
> quickly
> lead to an explosion of kmods.

I share Kevin's concerns and have some additional stuff to add:

-Where are bugs going to be filed for anything kernel-ish that goes  
wrong when people are running these kernels? Good chance they'll get  
filed at bugzilla.redhat.com. Trust me, Fedora kernel devs already  
have their hands full trying to weed through the bugs filed against  
the kernels they've built. Bugs for someone else's kernel: DO NOT WANT.

-Why are these patches not kmod-able or upstream-able? If they aren't  
either of those, then why would we even want to touch them?

-If we *do* do a custom patched kernel, I think we should do a kernel- 
rt before anything else... :)

-- 
Jarod Wilson
jarod at wilsonet.com