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Subject: Re: please revert commit ce8556cca6 "kbuild: verify that $DEPMOD is
 installed" introduced in v4.18.4.
To:     Dmitry Torokhov <dmitry.torokhov@gmail.com>
Cc:     "Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller" <hns@goldelico.com>,
        lucas.demarchi@profusion.mobi, lucas.de.marchi@gmail.com,
        michal.lkml@markovi.net, jeyu@kernel.org, cwhuang@linux.org.tw,
        "3.8+" <stable@vger.kernel.org>,
        lkml <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        Discussions about the Letux Kernel 
        <letux-kernel@openphoenux.org>,
        Masahiro Yamada <yamada.masahiro@socionext.com>,
        Linux Kbuild mailing list <linux-kbuild@vger.kernel.org>
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 <CAKdAkRQ+BXezzT0JsuSa_-imHq+u-q2P5rMVMCL4=N18VYxSAw@mail.gmail.com>
From:   Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org>
Message-ID: <7e154505-5f73-1054-e67e-cdfb249fec43@infradead.org>
Date:   Wed, 22 Aug 2018 18:07:34 -0700
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On 08/22/2018 05:39 PM, Dmitry Torokhov wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 22, 2018 at 4:35 PM Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org> wrote:
>>
>> On 08/22/2018 11:53 AM, H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:
>>> This patch requires that /sbin/depmod is installed and installable on
>>> the build host.
>>>
>>> But not all build hosts for cross compiling Linux are Linux systems
>>> and are able to provide a working port of depmod, especially at the
>>> file patch /sbin/depmod.
>>>
>>> I use, for example, a Darwin system to cross compile Linux and I run
>>> depmod -a on the embedded system once, after installing a new Linux
>>> kernel there.
>>>
>>> I have no problem with seeing a warning, but aborting the build process
>>> is IMHO a bad idea since the previous behaviour didn't harm many people
>>> as far as I see. Probably 99% of people compiling Linux kernels do that
>>> on Linux and 99% of those have depmod installed for optimal operation of
>>> their build host. So IMHO printing the warning is good enough.
>>
>> Thanks for the report and sorry about the problem.
>>
>> I'm OK with changing the error to a warning.
>> Does the patch below work for you?
> 
> Why would one want a warning on a host that never runs "make modules_install"?
> Can this check be only done when we actually try to install modules?


So Nikolaus:  how do you provoke this problem that you are reporting?
It's not just a theoretical problem, is it?

The way that I read the top-level Makefile, this check for $DEPMOD only happens
when you run "make modules_install".

-- 
~Randy