kernel-source required?

kernel-source required?

[Jan Engelhardt]

Hi,


just now as an IRC user posted about a compilation error, the only 
situation that I could think of to load to this error was a missing 
kernel source tree.
Since many Xtables header files are copied to the iptables source tree, 
yet `make KERNEL_DIR=somethinginvalid` gives a compiler error because it 
cannot find <linux/compiler.h> (required by ip_tables.h).

So I wonder, do we actually support building iptables without a 
kernel source tree?

Re: kernel-source required?

[Yasuyuki KOZAKAI]

From: Jan Engelhardt <jengelh@computergmbh.de>
Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2008 18:30:36 +0100 (CET)

> just now as an IRC user posted about a compilation error, the only 
> situation that I could think of to load to this error was a missing 
> kernel source tree.
> Since many Xtables header files are copied to the iptables source tree, 
> yet `make KERNEL_DIR=somethinginvalid` gives a compiler error because it 
> cannot find <linux/compiler.h> (required by ip_tables.h).

I wonder why recent (at least, Fedora Core 7) distributed kernel header
package for user programs does not include /usr/include/linux/compiler.h .

> So I wonder, do we actually support building iptables without a 
> kernel source tree?

I prefer to keep people easy to try newer iptables as possible.
We can add include/linux/compiler.h to iptables or remove __user, etc. from
headers of iptables.

-- Yasuyuki Kozakai

Re: kernel-source required?

[Patrick McHardy]

Yasuyuki KOZAKAI wrote:
> From: Jan Engelhardt <jengelh@computergmbh.de>
> Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2008 18:30:36 +0100 (CET)
> 
>> just now as an IRC user posted about a compilation error, the only 
>> situation that I could think of to load to this error was a missing 
>> kernel source tree.
>> Since many Xtables header files are copied to the iptables source tree, 
>> yet `make KERNEL_DIR=somethinginvalid` gives a compiler error because it 
>> cannot find <linux/compiler.h> (required by ip_tables.h).
> 
> I wonder why recent (at least, Fedora Core 7) distributed kernel header
> package for user programs does not include /usr/include/linux/compiler.h .

Debian doesn't have it either.

>> So I wonder, do we actually support building iptables without a 
>> kernel source tree?
> 
> I prefer to keep people easy to try newer iptables as possible.
> We can add include/linux/compiler.h to iptables or remove __user, etc. from
> headers of iptables.

Or simply define the missing annotations in xtables.h.