On Tue, 03 Aug 2004 23:29:35 +0200, Matthias Drochner
<m.drochner@fz-juelich.de> wrote:

> How modules can be built which fit exactly into an existing kernel, ie
> don't duplicate existing symbols, is a complex issue where I don't
> know a solution for. It might turn out that modules are to be built for each
> specific kernel incarnation as Linux does.
> More control over exported symbols, in-kernel loader and so might help...

This does not seem too much of a problem to have to build those
modules for each kernel incarnation, since often a kernel can be kept
as long as the duration of a full NetBSD release...

Does this however also mean not only each kernel revision, but each
kernel build, even of same revision?

I remember having to tweak symbols of third party modules on Linux
using objcopy despite the fact that they were released for the same
kernel version which I was using, and was not quite sure why it was
this way... And on Linux, you often need to upgrade kernels,
independently from rest of distribution or third-party modules, which
make things even worse...

Perhaps that eventually third-party/vendor modules will also be
supplied for NetBSD, which is why I was wondering. I also suspect that
some GPL licensed filesystems will become available in the form of
modules in the future, those will however hopefully compile using the
standard make modules framework, not requireing one to use binary
modules...

Thanks for working on the lkm framework,
Matt