"Kevin O'Gorman" at Thursday 24 July 2008, 03:26:26 > On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 5:06 PM, Volker Armin Hemmann > > wrote: > > On Mittwoch, 23. Juli 2008, Kevin O'Gorman wrote: > >> I run gentoo x86 stable, so that I usually avoid this sort of thing. > >> > >> This kernel, however, looks balky to me, because it's reporting > >> warnings and other oddities during compilation. I don't like warnings > >> at any time, and with the kernel's make wrappers cleaning up the > >> output they tend to stand out. > >> > >> Here's what I get: > >> -- various type/attribute warnings > > > > harmless. > > > >> -- reports of deprecated elements > > > > even more harmless > > > >> -- a report of "section mismatches", and instructions to use "make > >> CONFIG_DEBUG_SECTION_MISMATCH=y" to find details. > > > > completly harmless. > > > > All three 'problems' can be safely ignored. So do it. > > And how would I know they're harmless. No offense, but I don't know > enough about you to evaluate your skill or knowledge. > > I have seen lots of build problems over the decades, but these are new > to me. What I see is that for some time now, kernel builds have been > utterly clean, admirably free from the tedious command-line echoes > that obscure any real information from compiler/linker/whatever build > tools. You were ever able to built a kernel without warnings?! You certainly must have some magic in your hands ;) Kernel developers always had a dismissive attitude towards compiler warnings, non-serious warnings are rarely fixed. > So what's a poor user to do? Believe the first poster responding with > (apparent) authority? Maybe. I'm just going to stay away for a while > and see what shakes out. Obviously, despite all the warnings, a proper kernel binary was created. You wouldn't stop using a software just because of all the warnings, that are issued by a normal emerge, so why to are you taking warnings during a kernel build so much more serious? > >> All that being said, the compilation completes, and I can boot it. I > >> don't know the cause, but I have been unable to get vmware-server > >> running on it, and I'm going back to the previous kernel for that > >> reason. > > > > complain to vmware - it's their closed source crap that doesn't work. > > I have less clout with vmware than I have with the kernel team, I > would guess, because I don't pay either one, but at least the kernel > team are not in business to get money from me. But reasonable > virtualization is essential to some of my own projects, and I have to > stick with it. If I have to, I'll learn a different tools set, but > it's not something I take up lightly. And what are the kernel developers supposed to do regarding vmware? And should a closed source software, that's most likely only used by a minority of Gentoo users, really stop all the other users from profiting from a newer and probably faster and more stable kernel? -- Freedom is always the freedom of dissenters. (Rosa Luxemburg)