From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-Id: <200007242101.WAA16532@hyperion.valhalla.net> Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2000 21:58:12 +0100 Subject: Re: Kernel build headers [was: Re: problems about __cli()] From: "Iain Sandoe" To: Josh Huber , linuxppc-dev@lists.linuxppc.org Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Sender: owner-linuxppc-dev@lists.linuxppc.org List-Id: On Mon, Jul 24, 2000, Josh Huber wrote: > On Mon, Jul 24, 2000 at 09:11:08AM +0100, Iain Sandoe wrote: >> On 2.2.17pre10 (having done a make mrproper, menuconfig, dep): [snip] Thanks for the info. read & understood... guess I'll have to continue this way until my distro settles into the new way (or I have time to change distro)... >> Also, as I am doing, if you have a user-land program that accesses a >> kernel-maintained structure via a syscall - the layout of the kernel >> structure is (properly) defined in a header in linux/include/asm - but you >> also need to get at it when compiling the user-land program. > > In this case you should ship the corresponding header files that your > user space program uses with that user-space utility. This makes sure > that it gets things right and doesn't depend on having a kernel tree > around that you know the location of. For example, for a program I'm > working with, which uses an ioctl interface on a /dev entry (used to > use system calls, but switched), I've set up a directory tree like: > src all the code > include > linux header files copied from the kernel tree (just the ones I > need) > other header files > > This way, when autoconf places a -Ibuild_root/include with each > compile, it uses the local header files. > > Before I did this, building was hell -- it's SO much better being able > to build the user-space code on any box without having to untar kernel > source. > > Again, just my opinion, but I've found that this works very well. > > I believe in general, unless the program you're writing needs to track > the kernel very closely, it's bad practice to include kernel headers > in user-space code. Well, the user space prog. (posting due in about an hour ;-) is mainly for kernel/driver developers so they would naturally need to track the two together - I'm entirely in agreement that it is a bad idea to have general user programs that require kernel sources :-) Thanks, Iain. ** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/