[alsa-devel] alsa-drivers-HEAD does not compile against recent RHE5.1 kernels

[Ben Stanley]

On Wed, 2008-06-04 at 17:16 +0200, Takashi Iwai wrote:
> At Thu, 05 Jun 2008 01:12:28 +1000,
> Ben Stanley wrote:
> > 
> > So, if config.h is not needed in 'newer' kernels (and causes an error?),
> > and is needed in 'older' kernels, it is then an error to universally
> > include it in a configure test program where it causes an error if used
> > inappropriately...
> 
> Well, apparently it's only RH kernels that cause the problem.
> So I haven't cared about it at all.
> 
> > I think the error is not noticed in newer newer kernels because
> > init_utsname is defined in newer newer kernels. (I should look into this
> > statement some more.)
> 
> The problem is, as usual, RH kernels backported init_utsname in a
> different way than the upstream.  This makes things really hard.
> 
> 
> Takashi

Since its a RH kernel problem, I was hoping to prod a response out of
Jaroslav :-) .

This was a real PITA for us because the sound card manufacturer's
supported build procedure required updating the system ALSA to a
particular version before building their driver. The broken test for the
init_utsname symbol prevented this.

Anyway, in the end I have worked around this issue because I have
successfully compiled the driver in question against the kernel headers
as an external module without the need to use ALSA as a base. This also
makes the configuration more supportable from my point of view, as I
don't have to worry about re-testing everything else that depended on
the original system version of alsa. And getting the driver to compile
against RH kernel 2.6.18-53.1.19 was only really a matter of backporting
it to alsa 1.0.14 , which turned out to be not too hard. This build
procedure also allows me to use dkms to manage the installation of my
driver, which is something of a bonus.

Ben Stanley.