Re: [gentoo-kernel] Which Kernel?

[Tom Wijsman <TomWij@gentoo.org>]

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On Wed, 27 Feb 2013 13:07:38 +0100
Marc Schiffbauer <mschiff@gentoo.org> wrote:

> Am Dienstag, 26. Februar 2013, 19:13:18 schrieb Tom Wijsman:
> > On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 18:37:16 +0100 (CET)
> > 
> > As an easy way to keep a single kernel version from being unmerged
> > by a kernel upgrade in Portage, I think.
> > 
> >     emerge gentoo-sources:3.7.9
> 
> But why would you want that? I think normally its more likely that a
> user wants to stick to the seriens (e.g. :3.7) so that he/she
> receives security updates as well as minor fixes.

Because when sources unmerge, nothing can build against them and you
also can't do a quick recompile if you do not want to do an upgrade.
The majority of users doesn't upgrade on every single release, it is
better to support them in their upgrade schedule instead of forcing
them to upgrade or use more complex approaches to do what they want.

> If you really wanted to stick to a particular version you can always
> mask any version greater than that similar to what you wrote yourself
> below:
> 
> echo ">=sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-3.7" >> /etc/portage/package.mask

Doing this once per branch or for each version is a big difference.
 
> First, if you remove any gentoo-sources package it will never remove
> the kernel or modules that have been built from it. So you will
> always keep the kernel that may be important if a newer one has
> problems for example. Regardless of removing the sources or not.

As stated above, that doesn't allow you to reproduce them quickly.

> Then, I think using SLOTs for single versions is not really what
> SLOTs are made for. From what I understand, for a *single*
> *particular* version of any package you have ATOMs in portage and for
> a branch or a group of versions that belong together somehow you have
> SLOTs.

Quoting `man 5 ebuild`:

    SLOT   This sets the SLOT for packages that may need to have
           versions co-exist.

It does not say anything about branches or groups, it actually states
versions. There are use cases where people want 3.7.8 and 3.7.9 to
co-exist, the thread root gives such an example (pending nvidia patch).

For small packages, it doesn't really matter how you do it; but
setting up the kernel (copy config, make oldconfig) and compiling it
make explicit (un)masking much more annoying than just keeping
multiple versions within a branch around.

> I personally would like to see this scheme for kernels too. Be it
> gentoo- sources or hardened-sources.

All kernels share this SLOT syntax, it is implemented in the eclass.

This is for the eclass maintainers to decide, but they will likely
depend their decision on what all the eclass users think about that;
the other option is moving it to the ebuild but that approach leads to
inconsistency which is probably not a good idea.


With kind regards,

Tom Wijsman (TomWij)
Gentoo Developer

E-mail address  : TomWij@gentoo.org
GPG Public Key  : 6D34E57D
GPG Fingerprint : C165 AF18 AB4C 400B C3D2  ABF0 95B2 1FCD 6D34 E57D

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