On 3/6/06, Giacomo A. Catenazzi <address@hidden> wrote:
Sam Ravnborg wrote:
sr> Suggestion:
sr> We are now warned about an incompatibility in kbuild and we will
sr> fix this asap. But that you postpone this particular behaviour
sr> change until next make release. Maybe you add in this change as
sr> the first thing after the stable relase so all bleeding edge make
sr> users see it and can report issues.
I am willing to postpone this change. However, I can't say how much of
a window this delay will give you: I can say that it's extremely
unlikely that it will be another 3 years before GNU make 3.82 comes out.
One year would be good. The fixed kernel build will be available in an
official kernel in maybe two or three months form now. With current pace
we will have maybe 3 more kernel relase until this hits us. And only on
bleeding edge machines.
I don't think is a big issue. The short-cut "compile only the necessary
files" is used mainly by developers.
Anyway the kernel will remain correct. Maybe for old kernel it take more
time to build the kernel, but correct.
BTW Debian building tools (IIRC) clean the sources before every kernel
building process, and in 2.4 (and previous) it was high recommended to
clean and recompile all kernel before any changes, so no big issue in
these cases.
I don't know other "normal use", but I think it is not a big issue if
people will need a complete build in the rare (IMHO) case that they
want to recompile kernel (with small patches or changes in configuration).
Rebuilding the kernel tens (or hundreds) of times may be rare for most
ordinary users, but it's quite common for kernel developers.
Rebuilding the entire kernel every time you make a small change is a
big problem and cost a lot of people a lot of time - and the people
who will bear the cost are the ones who have to build many kernels.
IMHO this is a big problem.