Re: How to check if kernel sources are installed on a system?

[Willy Tarreau <willy@w.ods.org>]

On Sun, May 28, 2006 at 10:35:56PM -0700, 4Front Technologies wrote:
> BTW, why is Mandriva the only distro to turn OFF REGPARM?. Again, I think 
> distros shouldn't be given an option to turn it off if its a good thing 
> to have.
> 
> Are there any good reasons why REGPARM is turned off?.
> 
> ------------------
> 
> 
> Yet one more reason to have something like kernel-config (similar to 
> gtk-config or xmms-config) where you can get the package's cflags, 
> ldflags, other info.
> 
> for example
> 
> kernel-config --cflags should say -DUSE_REGPARM -I/lib/modules/blah/blah
> 
> kernel-config --libdir should say where the lib/modules/blah/blah
> 
> kernel-config --srcdir should say where the kernel sources are installed 
> or not installed.
> 
> kernel-config --configsrc should configure the kernel source with the 
> running
> kernel's configuration.
> 
> kernel-config --installsrc should automatically download the RIGHT source 
> from the net. Right now if you go on Ubuntu or Mandrake and you try to 
> install kernel source - you get the option of stripped source, 
> kernel-headers, kernel-2.6.blah which may not be installed.
> 
> Any comments?

This is a wrong thing to do IMHO, because it is incompatible with
cross-compilation, and the more the projects will use this method,
the more a nightmare it will become for distro maintainers. At
least when you rely on either a config file or something like this,
it's always possible to make it point to your target system's. But
when you *execute* commands on the build system, chances are that
you will not get the expected result. pcre-config, glib-config and
such are already in this case.

> best regards
> Dev Mazumdar
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> 4Front Technologies
> 4035 Lafayette Place, Unit F, Culver City, CA 90232, USA.
> Tel: (310) 202 8530		URL: www.opensound.com
> Fax: (310) 202 0496 		Email: info@opensound.com
> -----------------------------------------------------------

Regards,
Willy