Package: debian-policy
I wish to change Debian policy regarding libc and the kernel sources.
The document /usr/share/doc/libc6/FAQ.Debian.gz states:
Occasionally, changes in the kernel headers cause problems with the
compilation of libc and of programs that use libc. To ensure that users
are not affected by these problems, we configure libc to use the headers
from a kernel that is known to work with libc and the programs that
depend on stable kernel headers.
The kernel headers don't change much these days on stable releases, yet
the Debian libc packages continue to carry with them full sets of kernel
headers (whatever somebody has _manually_ copied into place as
/usr/include/{linux,asm,scsi,etc} on the system building glibc).
Why in the heck do we have kernel-headers packages in Debian? Why
do we have kernel-source packages? It seems to me that if building
libc _requires_ a particular set of kernel include files (which I
consider to be dubious) why not have glibc _depend_ on a particular
kernel-headers-xxx package? Why not have kernel headers provide
/usr/include/{linux,asm,scsi,etc} (or at least put in symlinks
for them pointing to /usr/src/kernel-headers-xxx)?
That would be a great service to kernel hackers, libc hackers, and
mirror maintainers (since libc would no longer have to carry around
the extra baggage of kernel headers).
-Erik
--
Erik B. Andersen Web: http://www.xmission.com/~andersen/
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--This message was written using 73% post-consumer electrons--
