I hadn't thought of the approach you mention: downloading always the vanilla Kernel sources, and deblobing as appropriate. I'll take a look at it.<div><br></div><div>Thanks Nick<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">2010/7/4 Nick <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:linux-libre-list@njw.me.uk">linux-libre-list@njw.me.uk</a>></span><br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">Hi Antonio,<br>
<br>
Quoth Antonio Grassi:<br>
<div class="im">> Hello list. I'm working on the LibreWRT project [1] whish is based on<br>
> OpenWRT [2]<br>
><br>
> The idea is to create an OpenWRT variant that would use only libre software.<br>
> OpenWRT is composed of a bunch of scripts that download the kernel and the<br>
> base system sources and compiles everything, producing a disk image.<br>
> Different kernel versions are used for different target architectures.<br>
<br>
</div>Brilliant! I have a WRT54GS router myself, running OpenWRT, and<br>
love to see more fun and freedom-oriented work done on it. (though<br>
I'm not sure if the free B43 firmware works yet - do provide<br>
instructions for this if it's possible sometime ;-))<br>
<div class="im"><br>
> As part of this work, we added a build option. When set, the kernel to<br>
> download and compile should be Linux-Libre instead of the blobbed one. I<br>
> made a POC which worked ok, and now I'm working on a clean patch to submit<br>
> upstream to OpenWRT.<br>
><br>
> The patch should ideally just change the URL used to download the kernel,<br>
> but this seems a bit hard, 'cause the directory structure & naming differs<br>
> between <a href="http://kernel.org" target="_blank">kernel.org</a> and Libre Linux. Even worse, I see that some releases end<br>
> in -libre, others in libre-1, libre-2, etc<br>
<br>
</div>Yes, this was tricky in the case of us at Gentoo, too. I ended up<br>
using<br>
<a href="http://www.fsfla.org/svnwiki/selibre/linux-libre/download/releases/LATEST-${DEBLOB_PV}.N/" target="_blank">http://www.fsfla.org/svnwiki/selibre/linux-libre/download/releases/LATEST-${DEBLOB_PV}.N/</a><br>
(where DEBLOB_PV is eg 2.6.30). This always points to the latest<br>
libre version. One slight issue with this, though, is that if that<br>
symlink changes because there's a different libre version (doesn't<br>
happen too often), the checksums which are automatically cached by<br>
Gentoo will change so integrity checks might change. Looking at it<br>
again, though, if you're getting the kernel sources rather than the<br>
deblob scripts, you'll still have to keep track of the libre<br>
version.<br>
<br>
The directory structure being slightly different was annoying for us<br>
too, but not difficult. Though as we now just apply the deblob<br>
script to a vanilla kernel, it's no longer an issue for us.<br>
<br>
I don't know how the OpenWRT build system works, but if you could do<br>
as we do, so that one can choose to automatically run the deblob<br>
scripts against any available kernel by choosing an option, that'd<br>
be nicer as whatever kernel patches people want, deblobbing will be<br>
available. Also, using the script handily steps around the naming<br>
and directory structure issues.<br>
<div class="im"><br>
> So I'm writing to the list to know if there's a logic behind the naming<br>
> scheme of Linux Libre, so that I can determine which is the folder and the<br>
> name of the tarball that should be used for a given version. E.g. if kernel<br>
> version is 2.6.32.14 how to know I should<br>
> download 2.6.32.14-libre1/linux-2.6.32.14-libre1.tar.bz2 ?<br>
<br>
</div>I believe the appended number to libre in the filename is to mark<br>
where there have been major changes to the deblob rules. There is<br>
mention of it somewhere in the archives (or just wait for a response<br>
from Alexandre).<br>
<div class="im"><br>
> I'm also curious about the reasons for not mirroring the<br>
</div>> kernel.orgdirectory & naming conventions, could someone illustrate me<br>
> about this?<br>
<br>
Yes, for the record, this would have been useful for us too, before<br>
we switched to using the script directly. I suggest the project<br>
considers switching to a directory structure as <a href="http://kernel.org" target="_blank">kernel.org</a>'s, and<br>
ideally stable and predictable tarball URLs, so it's easier for<br>
people to write interesting scripts to automatically get your deblob<br>
goodness :-)<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
Nick<br>
</font></blockquote></div><br></div>