Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 7 Apr 1998 21:27:07 -0400 (EDT) | From | Peter Amstutz <> | Subject | Modularizing source tree? |
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I hate to bring this up, and it's probably been argued before (I haven't been watching linux-kernel that long) but has any thought been given to modularizing the kernel source archive? It is presently topping 11 megabytes and constantly growing, and 2.2.0 will almost certainly be over twice as big as the .tar.gz for 2.0.0 was. Honestly, do I really need to download 5 megs of scsi or network drivers, or 1.5 megs of isdn or sound drivers, or platform specific code for the Amiga port (sheesh, I've never even *seen* an Amiga) just so I can get the latest kernel revision for my stock x86 pc?
Granted, I suppose this big 'ol tarball isn't so bad for if you have ISDN or ethernet to a T1, but those of us stuck on normal modems are beginning to feel the pinch. 11 megs is easily a two hour download on a 28.8, and we all know the possibility of something screwing up failure a download increases geometrically with time. It's also kind of hard to explain to people, "yea, Linux is a nice, sleek, unburdended system, you get to compile your own kernel, no bloat with stuff you don't need, but you have to keep this 40 meg source tree lying around in case you want to upgrade your kernel or tweak some feature". Hell, even W95 doesn't copy every single darn driver on the CD when you install it "just in case" like the current Linux source tree does. Don't have a SCSI subsystem? Too bad, you have to wait an extra ten minutes downloading for all those people that do!
I'm not saying that the kernel should be hacked up into bite sized pieces right now. With the current feature freeze that would create a mess. I'm saying it would be really nice if I could pick and choose what drivers I need for my system and just download those. Certainly this must be feasable for most of the things that currently can compile as modules? Maybe a few linkages need to go into the kernel, but (correct me if I'm wrong) a lot of modules can be compiled totally independently of the source tree, right? So why not let people d/l those instead? Create a "kernel core" with the stuff it needs to boot and the important stuff, like highlevel scsi, file system, sound driver, and the _really common_ stuff like IDE, ext2, sound blaster (maybe). A four meg core kernel + a couple megs of drivers beats out 11 - 12 megs any day.
Just my $0x02
Peter Amstutz
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