From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "Adam J. Richter" Date: Sun, 21 Jan 2001 02:25:23 +0000 Subject: Re: Roadmap to restoring working usb module autoloading? Message-Id: List-Id: References: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: linux-hotplug@vger.kernel.org >> = Adam Richter > = David Brownell >> [...] The big advantage of using version numbers >> for each ID structure instead of having depmod decide based on the >> kernel version string >> is that you can update different components >> of the kernel if yours is somewhat customized (e.g., imagine a 2.5.x >> USB backport to 2.4). However, this is currently defeated by an >> error check in depmod which compalins "Modules have a mixture of >> version ___ and version ___". Also, integer version numbers that >> increase by one create an ID allocation problem if somebody wants >> to ship a modified device ID structure and a modutils that will >> recognize it. >I'm not sure we'd want to encourage or support that. It'd >effectively be a kernel fork. It's free software, so "forks" that work tend to weave back into the standard versions and are in integral part of the process. In practice, I believe just about every Linux distribution has had to modify their kernels, and this often helps get those changes into Linus's kernels. I believe at least one Linux distribution shipped the 2.4 "back port" of the USB code in their 2.2 kernel, which, was probably a net benefit to the world. Of course, it's also easy enough to stip out the code from depmod that complains about the device ID version number differences without changing anything else if device ID version numbers do get integrated. Adam J. Richter __ ______________ 4880 Stevens Creek Blvd, Suite 104 adam@yggdrasil.com \ / San Jose, California 95129-1034 +1 408 261-6630 | g g d r a s i l United States of America fax +1 408 261-6631 "Free Software For The Rest Of Us." _______________________________________________ Linux-hotplug-devel mailing list http://linux-hotplug.sourceforge.net Linux-hotplug-devel@lists.sourceforge.net http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linux-hotplug-devel