On Wednesday 22 October 2003 3:40, Spider wrote:

> Because, they are two of the problematic builds that are affected by
> your suggested way of fixing, or breaking, things.   This was not
> personally directed at you, but taken out as examples of packages that
> can't just depend on "What am I running right now" Because of how they
> work.

Point taken. But even if I had this magical fix for the situation, I don't 
have need for those packages and my solution would be handicapped thusly.

> Curently my counterproposal is to actually have the usr/src/linux
> symlink directed at the target kernel, and if that link isn't found,
> assume that we want the running kernel instead, and repoint it at
> lib/modules/`uname -r`/build
>
> Just because usr/src/linux is a symlink in our case, why is that worse
> than following and relying on the /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build
>   symlink?  The name?  if that's the case, we could well make the
> symlink named "Target" and instead just confuse people more.

Okay, but your counterproposal would be flawed as well, because as you pointed 
out, you don't always keep your sources, and without those /usr/src/linux 
will point to nothing, as well as the /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build link. So 
what happens when those both fail? Do we fake a dir in /usr/src, so at leats 
one link works?

> Yes, I'm of the old school ,  I -assume- that people who suggest a way
> of doing things, also have tried it themselves, or are capable of
> implementing it.  When you don't have that situation, you get "Designed
> by Commite"  solutions that may sound good, but are in fact unworkable.

But in order to try this myself (if I was capable), I would need to atleast 
account for quite a few pieces of equipment that I don't currently own in 
order to support all posible scenarios, of which I couldn't afford to do, nor 
find storage for. In order to cover the most possible cases, we need "Design 
by Committe" with the people using this equipment.

> The personal form "i" which I used througout the whole email suggests
> that in this case it is my personal opinion.  To assume that it is that
> of a team, whom I've been sent forth to represent, is plain silly.

Regardless of this being your personal opinion, you're still a dev, and when 
devs say "worksforme" it tends to be the end of development and/or 
discussion, personal opinion or not. I don't assume the rest of the dev team 
agrees with you or otherwise. In fact, I'm gonna say most of them probably 
have given little thought to it one way or the other.


> And, in my not overly humble opinion, You have just as much to say as
> anyone else. Its not about your email address.

I've found that I usually have more to say than anyone else, its the getting 
people to relate part I have trouble with:)
-- 
Chuck Brewer
Registered Linux User #284015
Get my gpg public key at pgp.mit.edu!! Encrypted e-mail preferred.