Re: Why not make Linux source modular?
Albert Cahalan (albert@ccs.neu.edu)
Wed, 28 Feb 1996 16:42:06 -0500 (EST)
>>>> My point is this: Why is Linux kernel source distributed as
>>>> one big lump? Many of the drivers could be distributed seperatly
>>>> as modules, such as file system drivers, some Networking protocols,
>>>> Net cards etc... and have different people maintaining them. Ftape
>>>> already does this, and it works. (Although he is mumbling about
>>>> integrating it with the kernel...)
>>
>> One _major_ advantage as having it all in one lump is that when I change
>> some interface, I can then fix all the pieces that use that interface,
>> rather than just tell people who maintain all the pieces to fix it.
>> Believe me, it makes things a _lot_ easier.
>
> Your point is understandable. However, a lot of the kernel code isn't used
> in a simple installation. Look at the Ethernet card drivers, how many
> of us have 5 different cards in a machine? Its the driver code have seems
> to be expanding by leaps. Perhaps just having "drop-in" source modules for
> netdrivers and SCSI drivers. These take 4.5 megs combined.
>
> The idea isn't to make it hard for developers, but the size of the kernel
> is a consideration that should be addressed. I've not seen much of
> this thread but I agree something needs to be done fairly soon. The
> question is: how?
Put the source tree on a FTP site untarred, and write a tool to get
only what is needed. Change patch/diff to know the difference
between a missing file that needs to be added and a missing file
that is only missing because it was not downloaded. This should
work for most kernel patches. Also, hack the Makefiles to ignore
missing directories.
I think it would be easiest to do this by directory only.
Example: if you have include/i386, you must have all of it.