kernel-vanilla builds for 2.6.27-rc1

[Josh Boyer]

On Sat, 2008-08-09 at 23:20 +0100, Christopher Brown wrote:
> > The intention isn't to provide an "alternative" kernel.  It's more for
> > those that want to test something and see if it works on vanilla as
> > opposed to a patched Fedora kernel.  That should be quite rare, as the
> > Fedora kernels are fairly top notch and don't differ much from vanilla
> > anyway.
> 
> Then I suppose this begs the question - why aren't we shipping a
> vanilla kernel to begin with?

Because there are patches that _are_ carried in Fedora that aren't
upstream.  Execshield, utrace, etc.  And of course, the Fedora kernel
developers put bug fix patches into Fedora while things are being worked
upstream.

Also, while rawhide tends to track vanilla very closely, the release
version kernels do often care additional backports and fixes for things
like wireless, etc.  Just shipping the stock vanilla kernel there, while
not being horrible, wouldn't have the same functionality that Fedora
does.

> I'm sure there are excellent answers and I'm aware of some of them
> already. I do think it would be good to pimp this a bit more and that
> it could be offered as a viable alternative.
> 
> Or do I have my head in clouds I don't understand? Probably.

In the clouds, no.  It's just not feasible at the moment.

> > Also, due to quota limitations I can really only host one kernel version
> > at a time.  That means as soon as -rc3 comes out, the current builds are
> > replaced.
> 
> Understood, but if there was some way to get this added into the
> official repositories do the Fedora kernel bods see an opportunity?

I personally don't.  It's an additional kernel, which we've avoided to
date in the official repositories for good reasons.  It's also a lower
valued download target, and having it sitting there on the official
mirrors takes up roughly 2.4 GiB.

josh