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Date:      Sat, 7 Jul 2018 11:02:58 -0400
From:      Andrew Gallatin <gallatin@cs.duke.edu>
Cc:        src-committers@freebsd.org, svn-src-all@freebsd.org, svn-src-head@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: svn commit: r335916 - head/sys/conf
Message-ID:  <51ec1e54-c940-9800-5c84-0f9b6e08895f@cs.duke.edu>
In-Reply-To: <1dd03d43-6f0d-580b-fd3b-f4494da42c70@FreeBSD.org>
References:  <201807032305.w63N5guY063293@repo.freebsd.org> <20180704142233.GB5562@kib.kiev.ua> <6e5bc5e4-052c-877f-1c36-c72e276ff045@FreeBSD.org> <20180705155417.GI5562@kib.kiev.ua> <2a5b1c50-0f50-bbe1-4fcd-b98f61d24571@FreeBSD.org> <5B3EA725.4010202@grosbein.net> <1dd03d43-6f0d-580b-fd3b-f4494da42c70@FreeBSD.org>

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On 07/05/18 19:59, John Baldwin wrote:

> You misunderstand.  /usr/local/sys/modules would hold module sources so that
> they can be recompiled when building a kernel without having to rebuild the
> package or reinstall the package.  Binary modules would continue to be
> installed in /boot/modules.
> 

This is very similar to the approach that many Linux distributions take
with DKMS.  The kernel sources for out-of-tree modules are kept around,
and every time a kernel is installed, its new header files are used to
re-compile the out-of-tree module.   Similarly, when you install a
package containing a kernel module, it is re-compiled and installed
for every installed kernel.

One thing that was tangentially brought up is that the ability
to compile out-of-tree modules requires keeping the kernel-headers
around.  So we may need to identify all the headers that a module might
need, and install them in /boot/$KERNEL/sys or some-such.  This would
be needed if, for example, we wanted to install a new Nvidia or Virtual
Box module and have it work for older installed kernel versions too
(eg, across ABI breaking changes in -current).

This would certainly make life easier for people running -current.
This system works quite well on Linux.  For comparison, I used an
Ubuntu based desktop with Nvidia graphics at a previous employers,
and a FreeBSD-current desktop w/Nvidia graphics now. I've been left w/o
graphics  accidentally much more often on FreeBSD than I ever
had been on Ubuntu, even when compiling my own kernels from git..

Drew



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