>>>>> "Denis" == Denis Chapligin <chollya_at_satgate.net> writes:

    Denis> My problem is that i'm trying to build kernels in 'debian
    Denis> way', so i have a single .deb package with kernel, some
    Denis> patches, additional modules and so on. But coda module
    Denis> requires additional work in this case and it comes to be a
    Denis> problem whan you have several dozens of servers:) So
    Denis> providing a kernel patch for coda module will make a life
    Denis> easier .

But why should there be a separate patch for something that is already
in the kernel?  If the module distributed with the kernel doesn't work
for you, let's fix it!

>From what Jan says, I guess there's a backward compatibility problem
with the old implicit-single-realm kernel code and the modern explicit
realms code.  That should be fixed by adding two build suboptions to
build with the realms code and without, not by maintaining a separate
patch.  (Either or both modules could be built, and they would be
named "coda-realms" and "coda-norealms".)

This way you could (in theory) upgrade an individual client on-the-fly
with "modprobe -r coda-norealms; modprobe coda-realms".  Of course it
probably won't work so well in practice, but at least this would mean
every kernel would be ready for upgrade simply by switching modules.

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