Subject: Re: iproute2 and kernel headers

From: Mariusz Mazur <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2004 19:14:40 +0200

On wtorek 03 sierpień 2004 17:31, Stephen Hemminger wrote:
> > > I am willing to put some headers (not all) in with the user level
> > > code, provided they are copies since they I can easily update. I don't
> > > want to get into keeping an edited set of headers in sync.
> >
> >  Aren't linux-libc-headers (*) sufficient?
> >
> > * - http://ep09.pld-linux.org/~mmazur/linux-libc-headers/
>
> The theory of that is good, but in practice it would make the problem
> worse. What iproute2 wants is to have the same kernel data structures as
> the latest kernel. It is awkward enough making sure to get them from the
> correct kernel sources, but doing it from a different package would make
> updating and keeping everything current worse.

This message was forwarded to me (I'm the llh maintainer). Llh is being 
updated by generating a diff between incremental kernel releases, fixing that 
diff and applying it to the last version of llh. I do have scripts to check 
wether such an update doesn't break any headers. There is a slight 
possibility that such an update might omit some crucial changes, but (at 
least when it comes to network headers) co-developers of my distribution 
(PLD) will most likely detect that allmost instantly and notify me what's 
wrong (in such a case I will release a fixed version of llh asap).

Since removing all those glibc/linux-headers workarounds from 
iproute2/iptables was quite a pain for me I would really like to see building 
against llh at least as an option available from 'configure'.
(In case you're wondering - yes, we've been building all the linux network 
userland stuff against llh for about 8 months now without any problems... 
quite the opposite actually)

-- 
In the year eighty five ten
God is gonna shake his mighty head
He'll either say,
"I'm pleased where man has been"
Or tear it down, and start again