Re: Bug#703142: compatibility with alx ?

From: "Luis R. Rodriguez" <mcgrof@do-not-panic.com>
To: Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk>
Cc: backports@vger.kernel.org, 703142@bugs.debian.org,
	Camaleón <noelamac@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Bug#703142: compatibility with alx ?
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 02:07:46 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAB=NE6UPgjOXi7wWBmA5XVHY8MMcf6KwqSWxWViM6kiJYpV0tA@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <1363556604.3937.285.camel@deadeye.wl.decadent.org.uk>

On Sun, Mar 17, 2013 at 2:43 PM, Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk> wrote:
> [Re-sending to the correct list address.]
>
> On Sun, 2013-03-17 at 16:24 +0100, Camale=C3=B3n wrote:
>> El 2013-03-17 a las 14:58 +0000, Ben Hutchings escribi=C3=B3:
>>
>> > On Sun, 2013-03-17 at 15:46 +0100, Camale=C3=B3n wrote:
>>
>> (...)
>>
>> > > Using Debian's stock network driver is not an option for me (full re=
port
>> > > available here=C2=B2) so I have to try with the latests drivers but =
now that
>> > > "compat-drivers" are compiled the generated modules cannot be loaded=
.
>> > >
>> > > Is there any by-pass for this?
>> > >
>> > > =C2=B9http://marc.info/?t=3D136351034300002&r=3D1&w=3D2
>> > > =C2=B2http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=3D664767
>> >
>> > Talk to the compat-drivers developers.
>>
>> To be sincere, I don't think that's a user's role.
>>
>> I don't know what's going on with these drivers but if they are not
>> supported by Debian at all it would be better for all of us (plain
>> users and developers) to simply say it so to avoid wasting time and
>> resources.
>
> I would like to support them, in fact more than that I would like to
> integrate them into official packages.  But there is no way we can
> support an OOT module that defines symbols that we might need to add for
> our own backports.  As it is 'compat' will ironically cause
> incompatibility with Debian's own kernel upgrades.
>
> Compat developers: please add a prefix (not 'compat', that one's already
> taken!)

We have been using compat_ for a while now to prefix a lot of our
symbols without clashes for the 32-64 compat stuff, but sure -- we can
use something else to help with any theoretical issues. Surprised
Debian of all distributions would frankly have been affected given
RHEL / SUSE didn't, but its OK, lets deal with it.

> to all the symbols exported by the 'compat' module.  Just
> #define'ing the function/variable name before declaring them should
> avoid the need for any changes to the drivers using it.

How about backport_ ? Patches coming up.

  Luis