[Angstrom-devel] [RFC] Get rid of adhoc machine-specific messing with kernel packages

[Paul Sokolovsky]

Hello angstrom-distro-devel,

  Thanks for providing pre-holiday 20061219 snapshots for testing.
They don't provide separate zImages, but well, that's ok - they are in
the images, after all.

  Well, not for hx4700, for example. Because:

======== linux-handhelds-2.6.inc =====
FILES_kernel-image_hx4700 = ""
ALLOW_EMPTY_hx4700 = "1"
FILES_kernel-image_htcuniversal = ""
ALLOW_EMPTY_htcuniversal = "1"
======================================

  Oops. Sources of such a special treatment of hx4700 and htcuniversal
would be unclear to outsider, but people who deal with (mis)features
of "ipaqs" know, that hx4700 has one (sic!, even if the most popular)
bootloader which doesn't use zImage in the image, but instead requires
adhoc means to install kernel, ditto for Universal, though bootloader
is another.

  So, what is tried here is to "save space". But there're few issues:

1. See concern in the beginning of the message.
2. It's pretty weird to do such hack on a package level. Kernel
package supposed to contain kernel, period. If there's some pressure
to not have kernel in image, that's from where it should be removed.
3. Keywords in the description why this being done above are "a
bootloader" and "currently". Sooner or later all this adhockery will
be gone, and existing generic, machine-independent solutions, like
LAB, will be adopted, which boot from the filesystem, and thus adhere
to idea of complete system maintenance via packaged install
(including, for kernel). For the multimachine distribution like
Angstrom, supporting hacks like above is already pain in the neck, as
the case above shows.


  So, my proposal is to remove the lines quoted above. People who
under pressure to have an extra MB and don't shudder to steal it from
the kernel, can do that manually ;-).


-- 
Best regards,
 Paul                          mailto:pmiscml at gmail.com