Re: [PATCH 1/2] kbuild: add target to install gzipped modules

[Lucas De Marchi]

2011/12/29 Michal Marek <mmarek@xxxxxxx>:
> Dne 29.12.2011 16:50, Lucas De Marchi napsal(a):
>> Add target in Makefile to compress the module after it's installed.
>> Module-init-tools and libkmod can handle gzipped modules.
>
> I am not convinced that this is a needed feature. Compressing elf files
> means that depmod and modinfo need to read the whole compressed file
> from disk and unpack it, while only a couple of bytes need to be read.
> Those concerned about disk space either compile only the few needed
> modules and/or use some compressed filesystem, which allows for random
> access.
>
>
>> This is not much useful for distributions because the package will gzip
>> the modules and call depmod in a install rule. However for those
>> compiling the kernel on their own and debugging module loading, it's
>> useful so depmod doesn't have to be called twice and we don't have to
>> manually compress the modules.
>
> I understand that you need *.ko.gz support in kmod for the sake of
> feature parity and that such patch would help you with debugging. But I
> doubt there is use for it apart of developing kmod. Wouldn't an external
> script like this do the same job for you?
>
> #!/bin/sh
> make "$@" modules_install
> rel="$(make -s "$@" kernelrelease)"
> find "/lib/modules/$rel" -name '*.ko' -exec gzip '{}' ';'
> depmod "$rel"

Sure, but it has the same problem of running depmod twice. I was
thinking that compressed modules might be useful for others, not
developing kmod. At least I know Archlinux uses gzipped modules by
default and probably gentoo guys, too.


Lucas De Marchi
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/