Re: [PATCH RFC 2/4] build: Download and build extnernal blktap2.5 repo

[Ian Campbell <ian.campbell@citrix.com>]

On Mon, 2015-03-30 at 15:33 +0100, Wei Liu wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 12:46:08PM +0000, George Dunlap wrote:
> > Download and build XenServer's blktap as an external tree, similar to
> > qemu-xen.
> > 
> > As of this patch we just download and build it, but don't install or
> > use it.
> > 
> > Signed-off-by: George Dunlap <george.dunlap@eu.citrix.com>
> > ---
> > 
> > FIXME: Directly use the XenServer github repo for now, while we're
> > discussing things.  If we decide to take this series, we'll have to
> > clone the tree on xenbits and remove the FIXME line.
> > 
> 
> IMHO we need to support --with-system-blktap= in configure in case
> distro wants to package blktap separately. Not sure if in practice this
> makes sense since AIUI blktap is only used by Xen.

I think you are right, there are at least some distros which ship a
blktap package not from Xen. e.g. Debian ship, or have in the past
shipped, the blktap2.5 packages.

blktap is a bit different to some of the other similar cases though in
that there is a circular dependency, although George indicated last week
that he thought that might be an easily fixed one.

Ian.