Re: Removing .tmp_versions considered harmful

[Pavel Roskin <proski@gnu.org>]

Hello, Sam!

On Fri, 2006-04-21 at 09:32 +0200, Sam Ravnborg wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 21, 2006 at 12:22:22AM -0400, Pavel Roskin wrote:
> > Hello!
> > 
> > A patch applied shortly after Linux 2.6.16
> > (fb3cbd2e575f9ac0700bfa1e7cb9f4119fbd0abd in git) causes
> > the .tmp_versions directory to be removed every time make is run to
> > build external modules.
> > 
> > 
> > 2) The projects where modules are build in more than one directory (such
> > as MadWifi) are now compiled with spurious warnings about unresolved
> > symbols.  This happens because every module is compiled individually,
> > and the *.mod files for one module are removed before the other is
> > compiled.
> 
> Then fix madwifi so it builds modules as documented in
> Documentation/kbuild/modules.txt
> See: --- 5.3 External modules using several directories

Thanks for showing me this section!  I wish I saw it before I submitted
patches to MadWifi, HostAP and linux-wlan-ng makefiles.  Now I know how
to fix all that mess.

> As with many other external modules madwifi contains a lot of ugly
> makefile hackery - and if done as documentated it gets so much simpler.
> I'm aware that 2-4 support complicates things a little but if people
> made it be slimm and nice for 2.6 and _then_ added 2.4 supporrrrrrrrrrit
> woulllllld be much simpler.
> It seems that people keep all the hackery for 2.4 and does a bad job
> adapting to 2.6.

I agree with your sentiment, and I'm trying to fix it.

However, the problem with "make install" creating .tmp_versions owned by
root still exists.  Can we settle on removing only *.mod files
under .tmp_versions without removing the directory?
Removing .tmp_versions does nothing if the goal is to remove stale *.mod
files.

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin