[oe] [oe-commits] Roman I Khimov : (e) glibc-package: fix kernel version passed to qemu

[Phil Blundell]

On Mon, 2009-05-18 at 19:54 +0100, Phil Blundell wrote:
> On Mon, 2009-05-18 at 22:42 +0400, Roman I Khimov wrote:
> > Now, I think that this should be fixed on target level. OLDEST_KERNEL should 
> > be something sane. Global 2.4.0 from bitbake.conf is good enough for most 
> > targets, but if we know that none of ARM EABI works with kernel versions prior 
> > to 2.6.14, we should set OLDEST_KERNEL to 2.6.14 for that targets. Or higher, 
> > of course, if target needs/wants that. If that's OK with all, I'm doing a 
> > patch.
> 
> I'm still not convinced this is either practical or desirable.  The
> kernel versions you mentioned are the minimum required for the
> particular version of glibc you were looking at, but different libcs or
> different versions of the same libc will have different minimum kernel
> requirements even for the same target.  (As an obvious example, the m68k
> port has been supported in glibc since its inception and clearly didn't
> require a 2.6.18 kernel to start with.)

The other thing to say about OLDEST_KERNEL is that it was intended to be
controlled by the DISTRO, not by the MACHINE.  In other words, it's a
policy control ("kernel x.xx is the earliest one we care about; it's
okay to omit the compatibility bits for older ones") and not a target
attribute ("kernel x.xx is the minimum required for correct
functionality").  We don't currently have a variable with the latter
semantics and nor am I very convinced that it would be a good idea to
introduce one.

p.