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

[Mattia Dongili]

On Thu, September 15, 2016 7:16 pm, Ben Hutchings wrote:
...
>
> 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's a mini-team (Ritesh and me) taking care of UML today.
What is the expectation for that someone?
I'm willing to step forward, but I'm also aware I have limits in my
availability.

> 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).

Yes, these both need to be solved. To be fair I haven't had time to look
into the specifics but that's what's next.

> - 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?

I haven't been tracking RCs, but stable releases aren't giving many
problems (a recent one was that then nvram module broke, but that's a case
of a module that doesn't make sense for UML and shouldn't be enabled to
start with).
>From looking at the UML upstream mailing lists, there haven't been many
big breakages in recent times.

-- 
mattia
:wq!