Preventing conflicts between kernel header versions?

Hi kvm team,

I'm tracking Linus.git, kvm.git, and VirtualBox.svn, among other open source projects. I'm finding a conflict between kvm.git and VirtualBox.svn over the version of my linux kernel headers.

Specifically, kvm wants the files asm/kvm_para.h (and friends), but apparently looks in /usr/include/asm for those files and can't find them --> because my linux distro installs kernel headers from 2.6.26 in /usr/include/linux and /usr/include/asm.

If I make /usr/include/linux and /usr/include/asm symlinks to my Linus.git repository, then kvm is happy and I'm happy -- until I try to build VirtualBox.svn, which is now broken because of those very same symlinks.

Because kvm is very fussy about using exactly the correct version of the linux kernel headers, wouldn't it be reasonable to teach kvm.git to look in the right place for those headers instead of in /usr/include? I.e. /lib/modules/2.6.28-rc3/build/ for example.

Is there an easier way to fix this problem?

Thanks!

Well, I just discovered the --with-patched-kernel flag, which fixes my compile problem with kvm, so I guess there is no header conflict after all. I took so long to try that flag because I didn't know what "don't use external module" means -- and I'm still not sure what 'external' means. External to what?

Thanks!

to the kernel.

One of the options to build kvm is to build the module distributed with kvm-userspace,
instead of the kernel version. Before kvm was included in the kernel, you would be
either using this external module distributed in the userspace package or patch your kernel.
So this is mostly historical.

Glauber  Costa.
"Free as in Freedom"
http://glommer.net

"The less confident you are, the more serious you have to act."