[asterisk-dev] Re: Kernel modules => mainline kernel

[Tzafrir Cohen]

On Mon, Feb 12, 2007 at 11:10:11AM -0600, Matthew Fredrickson wrote:
> 
> On Feb 12, 2007, at 3:14 AM, Benny Amorsen wrote:
> 
> >>>>>>"PC" == Paul Cadach <paul at odt.east.telecom.kz> writes:
> >
> >PC> How much zaptel hardware available at the market? How many people
> >PC> uses such hardware? IMHO not more than 10% of all Linux
> >PC> installations around the world.
> >
> >There are drivers in the mainline kernel for hardware which only
> >exists as a few prototype boards.
> 
> I think part of it is that we want to keep any changes we make fairly 
> accessible.  What happens if we start rewriting some of the APIs in 
> zaptel and distributions start compiling it into the kernel?  That 
> means that every user that wants to upgrade needs to recompile their 
> kernel.  This also makes users of zaptel more aware of changes, bug 
> fixes and updates that we make, that may not be deemed "worthy" by 
> distribution X to be reason to update the -kernel.[rpm,deb].  I think 
> that if you have to install it yourself, you are more likely to be in 
> the line of communication to find out about updates as well.

Quite accessible indeed.

We commited some code. Tested it on a Fedora system. Noticed Fedora did
a little bit of backport of a tiny kernel feature. So their 2.6.18
kernels actually behave like 2.6.19 . This is the thing that was
commited into zaptel 2.6.13 .

Oops. This badly broke people with real 2.6.18 kernels (I didn't notice
this at first in this 2.6.18 Debian system, as debugfs is disabled
there). No problem: reverted the situation in Zaptel branch 1.2 .

Only to get some complaints from a member of this list who uses some 
kernel 2.6.18 from Fedora Core 5. His post was responded with: "sure,
zaptel with build with your kernel. Just apply this tiny patch".

All of that, and more, under
http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-dev/2007-February/026085.html

The main issue there is still left without the workaround I have
expected it to have.


So the net result is that installing Zaptel on your own remains a
painful task. 

-- 
               Tzafrir Cohen       
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