make buildkernel fails without complete source tree

[Tom Rhodes]

On Mon, 22 Jan 2007 14:01:38 -0500
Ken Smith <kensmith at cse.Buffalo.EDU> wrote:

> On Mon, 2007-01-22 at 10:47 -0800, Doug Barton wrote:
> > Ken Smith wrote:
> > 
> > > I think that's what Ruslan meant by it having "traditionally been
> > > standalone".  By tradition someone who just extracted the sys stuff
> > > wasn't expecting to do 'make buildkernel', they expected to do the
> > > 'config, etc'.  For example someone who wanted to build custom kernels
> > > but had no intention of updating the machine using the source tree, and
> > > they knew how to build the kernels manually.
> > 
> > True, but that's not even close to being the majority of FreeBSD
> > users. Given that we promote 'make buildkernel' as the "proper" way of
> > making a kernel, IMO we need to do what is necessary to make it easy
> > for users to do that.
> > 
> 
> True.  I guess this is sort of where I was headed.  IMHO we should
> either leave it as-is for the traditionalists or we should bite the
> bullet and stop providing a separate kernel source tree.  As John
> pointed out in the message after this one life has moved on and
> now /usr/src is teeny compared to the size of disks.  Is it worth the
> hassle/confusion to provide just kernel source any more?

I've been thinking of this, perhaps drastic idea:  Don't split the
sources up anymore.  I'm not sure there is a need to have just
this part or that part.  Just bundle it all together and ask the
user if they want the sources.

Perhaps this email is useless without a patch, which I could
work on, but not this moment.

-- 
Tom Rhodes