Re: Red Hat 6.1 version.h modifications
Ben Collins (collinbm@djj.state.va.us)
Wed, 6 Oct 1999 06:16:00 -0400
On Wed, Oct 06, 1999 at 11:48:13AM +0200, Bernhard Rosenkraenzer wrote:
> On Tue, 5 Oct 1999, Zack Brown wrote:
> > It seems like this could break anything that checks version.h; or am I
> > wrong?
>
> You are. The entire point behind the version.h changes is that
> applications will see the kernel we're actually using, and not a different
> one.
> In particular, this is because UTS_RELEASE should say different things
> about up and smp kernels.
>
> The only check this change would break is something along the lines of
> using grep and sed to check for a value.
> Autoconf, for example, doesn't do this; it uses the preprocessor (thereby
> including /boot/kernel.h) before running any checks.
It seems to have added one more complexity that isn't standard on other
systems, however. So now when users manually upgrade their kernel, and things
break, we will have to ask them, "are you using that redhat > 6.1? did you
upgrade your kernel headers in /usr/include/{linux,scsi,asm}?"
Not everyone wants to have to upgrade their headers, especially for a quick
two line patch that fixes the problem well before RedHat releases a new
kernel version that does the same thing. Sounds like extra support on RedHat's,
but it eventually filters down to the public forums.
Ben
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