open-vm-tools (was Re: [Policy Change] Kernel Module...)

Denis Leroy denis at poolshark.org
Sun Sep 23 09:11:27 UTC 2007


Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
> At one point (pre Fedora 8), packages containing "addon" kernel modules
> were permitted. This is no longer the case. Fedora strongly encourages
> kernel module packagers to submit their code into the upstream kernel
> tree.
> 
> Existing kernel module packages must be removed (or merged into the main
> kernel package) before Fedora 9.
> 
> The reference documentation on how to package kernel modules in the
> "kmod" style has been preserved
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Obsolete/KernelModules
> 
> This change was ratified by FESCo.

In a somewhat ironic turn of event, the new policy coincides with the 
release of the much anticipated open-vm-tools 
(http://open-vm-tools.sourceforge.net/), the VMware guest OS tool suite. 
VMware is doing the right thing here by completely opening up their 
guest stuff and it's fair to say nobody will miss their Nvidia-style 
vmware-config-tools.pl script (and the any any updates) :-)

It would be nice to have this in Fedora. The goal being having Fedora 
fully functional out of the box when installed in a VM.

The review is here:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=294341

Philip Langdale says they are aware of the need to push this upstream 
and will work on it. Eventually (see bugzilla ticket). How actively is 
unfortunately hard to know for sure. To their defense, they have 
successfully pushed some of their work upstream in the past, their X.org 
driver for example.

So how can we make this happen ? Could this be discussed at the next 
FESCo meeting ?

thx
-denis




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