kernel headers by default revisit...

[Daniel J Blueman]

On 17 July 2012 22:48, Oliver Grawert <ogra at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> hi,
> Am Dienstag, den 17.07.2012, 22:28 +0800 schrieb Daniel J Blueman:
>> IMHO, the installation and updating of linux-headers-generic and (eg)
>> linux-headers-3.2.0-26, linux-headers-3.2.0-26-generic is unneeded for
>> Ubuntu desktop users by large; I always remove these on
>> non-development setups.
>>
>> Provided the dependencies are correct, it'll be pulled in by eg dkms,
>> libc-dev etc when expected.
>>
>> So, what is the current justification for installing these packages per default?
>
> special HW i.e. exotic unpacked network card drivers ... without the
> minimal build env we ship you would be pretty screwed getting these to
> build and without network installing the headers and friends is painful.
>
> please lets keep it as is so people can still build third party drivers
> from upstream sources and benefit from the flexibility of linux if
> needed ...

I guess you're talking about the minimal build environment provided by
build-essential, or otherwise?

So, eg it would be intuitive for eg build-essential to
recommend/depend on linux-headers, no? In practise, probably better
for libc6-dev to recommend/depend on linux-headers though, or am I
missing something?

The case you mention seems highly atypical though, since how many
average users will run on exotic hardware and have the source for the
driver they'll just rebuild when they don't have a net connection
anyway?

Thanks,
  Daniel
-- 
Daniel J Blueman