[Pkg-uml-pkgs] Bug#837920: user-mode-linux should be built directly by src:linux

[Ben Hutchings]

On Thu, 2016-09-15 at 17:09 +0300, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> Package: user-mode-linux
> Version: 4.7-1um-1
> Severity: normal
> 
> A separate source package for user-mode-linux made sense 15 years
> ago,
> when a huge patch of non-upstreamed kernel code existed for user-
> mode-linux.
> 
> What is left today in the user-mode-linux source package are 6 small
> patches to UML-specific code (2 or 3 of them look Debian-specific)
> and the kernel configurations for i386 and amd64.
> 
> There doesn't seem to be any good reason left for a separate source
> package, and this would also bring DSA fixes for stretch kernels
> automatically to the user-mode-linux kernel.

I'm open to the possibility of folding this into src:linux, if someone
in (or joining) the kernel team can take responsibility for maintaining
it.  Now that all the userland tools are built from src:linux, it might
not be that hard to add UML.

There are a few issues I can immediately see:

- UML binaries can't be built using the existing makefile rules for
linux-image packages, as they need different package names,
installation paths, and maintainer scripts.  This would need entirely
new rules.

- The current base config (debian/config/config) might not make any
sense for UML (but then, maybe all the irrelevant stuff will simply be
disabled automatically).

- I'm a little concerned about the possibility of build breakage in UML
that would then block everything else built from src:linux.  Does UML
break often?

Ben.

-- 
Ben Hutchings
Computers are not intelligent.	They only think they are.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 801 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-uml-pkgs/attachments/20160915/6ae574ac/attachment-0001.sig>