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Date:      Thu, 18 Jan 2001 00:33:28 -0800 (PST)
From:      John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org>
To:        Neil Blakey-Milner <nbm@mithrandr.moria.org>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org, freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org, dan@langille.org, Dima Dorfman <dima@unixfreak.org>, "Donald J . Maddox" <dmaddox@sc.rr.com>
Subject:   Re: too much confusion over kernel building
Message-ID:  <XFMail.010118003328.jhb@FreeBSD.org>
In-Reply-To: <20010118094123.B6927@rapier.smartspace.co.za>

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On 18-Jan-01 Neil Blakey-Milner wrote:
> On Thu 2001-01-18 (02:23), Donald J . Maddox wrote:
>> On Wed, Jan 17, 2001 at 11:15:28PM -0800, Dima Dorfman wrote:
>> > > Over the past few weeks and months, I've seen far too many people 
>> > > using "make buildkernel KERNEL=MYKERNEL" when they should have 
>> > > used "config MYKERNEL".
>> > 
>> > I'm not quite sure we should be advocating using the older, `config
>> > MYKERN` method.  It doesn't really have any advantages over the newer
>> > one, and suggesting different ones for different purposes will only
>> > confuse the novices, IMO.  Plus, `make buildkernel KERNEL=MYKERNEL` is
>> > quite a bit simpler than,
>> > 
>> >       config MYKERNEL && cd ../../compile/MYKERNEL && make depend && make
>> > 
>> > So, my question is, why use the older one?  I can understand why
>> > people still use it because they've been doing it that way for the
>> > last X years, but that's no reason to teach it to new people.
>> 
>> It seems to me that most of the confused are usually just trying to
>> recompile a custom kernel to add, for example, sound support.  It's
>> ridiculous to make these people do a full world build just to be able
>> to hear sound from their soundcard.  Obviously, if you have updated
>> your source tree from, it's very dangerous NOT to do the buildworld -
>> buildkernel - installkernel - installworld dance.  But it's silly to
>> advocate that someone who just installed 4.2, and simply wants to hear
>> an MP3 must do a full buildworld...  Just my $0.02.
> 
> Who exactly is advocating a full buildworld?  The "new" style should not
> require a full buildworld.  If it doesn't work, it's a bug.

buildkernel assumes a worst case environment by default.  The problem is that
there isn't the One True Way(tm) to build a kernel that works for all cases. 
buildkernel is needed when updating the system, but if you are just changing
the kernel config and building a new kernel w/o changing your source tree, you
should be using the old method.  I don't actually use buildkernel as it is only
needed in very rare cases such as when crossing over a binutils upgrade
_anyway_.

-- 

John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> -- http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/
PGP Key: http://www.baldwin.cx/~john/pgpkey.asc
"Power Users Use the Power to Serve!"  -  http://www.FreeBSD.org/


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