madwifi-source

[Emmet Hikory]

Onno Benschop wrote:
> On 21/02/08 20:28, Matthew Garrett wrote:
>  > The madwifi code is already in linux-restricted-modules, so there's no
>  > benefit in providing a separate source package as well.
>  >
>  I understand that, however, if you have a machine that has a card that
>  is not supported by the linux-restricted-modules, you would use
>  module-assistant to create a module to match your kernel.
>
>  If you had the madwifi-source package, you could patch it and compile a
>  module in such a way that it would continue to be maintainable, rather
>  than get the source from madwifi.org, unpack it, make and make install
>  it and have unknown files scattered all over your file-system.

    From a maintenance perspective, it is significantly easier when
there is only one copy of any given source in the archive.  While it
may be a little more complicated to download the source providing
linux-restricted-modules-`uname -r` to patch, a full solution needs to
either be integrated with this source, or a result of a breakdown of
this source, rather than the reintroduction of code duplication for
each set of modules, with the attendant support issues related to
which version of the module happens to be installed on a user system,
etc.

>  Finally, if the madwifi-source isn't available, then I suspect there's a
>  bug in module-assistant, seeing that it still has madwifi as an option.

    Yes.  This is bug #136852 (1).  More generally, module-assistant
needs a cleanup after many of the duplicated sources in individual
-source packages were removed.

1: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/module-assistant/+bug/136852

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Emmet HIKORY