Like all good bits of software, the kernel.spec has grown over time.
Part of this growth has come from building more of the userspace
tools that live under the tools directory of the kernel. I've been
experimenting with moving these to a separate spec file.
Advantages:
- Less stuff in the kernel.spec file (~300 line deletion)
- Fewer build deps for things like perf
- People building the kernel only get the kernel
- Issues with userspace tools don't impact the kernel
- Can likely drop most of the debuginfo regex nightmare for the userspace packages
Disadvantages:
- Would need to manually keep in sync on some cadence. This is mostly
an issue for rawhide. Could we actually get away with only re-building
on each new kernel version or do we need to resync on each -rc?
- Would probably need to rework how tools are tied to kernel versions at
the package level
- Others added here
I've experimented with something at
https://pagure.io/kernel-tools-pkggit
which is mostly a copy/paste of parts of the kernel.spec file. I'm
mostly looking for general feedback about if this a good idea but
I'm also interested in specific feedback if you have it.
Thanks,
Laura