From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Mark H Weaver Subject: Re: why is linux-libre-headers behind linux-libre? Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2017 03:44:41 -0500 Message-ID: <87po8vhk3q.fsf@netris.org> References: <87bmkn7awd.fsf@albion.it.manchester.ac.uk> <20171031193852.GB987@macbook41> <87fu9x2df8.fsf@albion.it.manchester.ac.uk> <878tfksp03.fsf@gnu.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:55459) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1eBd1t-0001vU-JU for guix-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 06 Nov 2017 03:45:14 -0500 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1eBd1q-00007d-Gq for guix-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 06 Nov 2017 03:45:13 -0500 In-Reply-To: <878tfksp03.fsf@gnu.org> ("Ludovic \=\?utf-8\?Q\?Court\=C3\=A8s\=22'\?\= \=\?utf-8\?Q\?s\?\= message of "Sun, 05 Nov 2017 16:51:08 +0100") List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: "Guix-devel" To: Ludovic =?utf-8?Q?Court=C3=A8s?= Cc: guix-devel , Dave Love Hi, ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Court=C3=A8s) writes: > Dave Love skribis: > >> Efraim Flashner writes: >> >>> On Tue, Oct 31, 2017 at 02:00:35PM +0100, Vincent Legoll wrote: >>>> Hello, >>>>=20 >>>> On Tue, Oct 31, 2017 at 1:35 PM, Dave Love wrote: >>>> > Why is linux-libre-headers a long way behind linux-libre (currently = at >>>> > version 4.4.47, compared with 4.13.10 for linux-libre)? >>>>=20 >>>> I suspect this is due to massive rebuilding that would occur when >>>> updating linux-libre-headers > > That and also because glibc targets (can target) older kernels, which is > something we rely on. > >>> This is typically updated in the core-updates branch, but it hasn't been >>> updated yet. Based on the LTS versions, we should upgrade it to the 4.9 >>> branch. >> >> Thanks for the explanations. I checked that 4.9 would support the >> Omnipath library, at least. > > The Omnipath library relies on Linux (not libc) headers, and a specific > version thereof? > > I suppose we could also introduce a more recent version of > =E2=80=98linux-libre-headers=E2=80=99 specifically for this purpose, with= the > understanding that the resulting binaries rely on a specific kernel > version. Are you sure about this? My impression was that binaries compiled with newer linux-libre-headers can be run on older kernels. If you were correct, then the binaries we've been building throughout 2017 could be reliably run only on linux-libre-4.4 or newer. In fact, we've been successfully running these Guix binaries on hydra.gnu.org with its old 2.6.x kernel, and on build slaves running kernels older than 4.4. Furthermore, I strongly suspect that many of our users (e.g. Trisquel users) have been running Guix on older kernels as well, and yet I don't recall seeing any bug reports related to this. My recommendation would be to update linux-libre-headers to the latest LTS kernel (currently 4.9.x) in every core-updates cycle. What do you think? Mark