Re: [gentoo-dev] News Item: OpenAFS no longer needs kernel option DEBUG_RODATA

[Andrew Savchenko]

On Wed, 20 Jul 2016 15:12:01 -0400 Michael Orlitzky wrote:
> On 07/20/2016 01:13 PM, NP-Hardass wrote:
> > Display-If-Installed: <=net-fs/openafs-kernel-1.6.18.2
> >
> > ...
> >
> > Starting with net-fs/openafs-kernel-1.6.18.2, this condition is no longer
> > forced in the ebuild.
>
> Might not that version bound might backfire if someone upgrades before
> reading the news? People who pull from git often don't necessarily get
> the news in a timely fashion.
>
> Would it be simpler to ewarn in the ebuilds (for e.g. a year) if
> DEBUG_RODATA=n?

We already do this in openafs-kernel-1.6.18.2.ebuild:

    if use kernel_linux && [[ ${REPLACING_VERSIONS} < "1.6.18.2" ]]; then
        ewarn "As of OpenAFS 1.6.18.2, Gentoo's packaging no longer requires"
        ewarn "that CONFIG_DEBUG_RODATA be turned off in one's kernel config."
        ewarn "If you only turned this option off for OpenAFS, please re-enable"
        ewarn "it, as keeping it turned off is a security risk."
    fi

The rationale for the news item in addition to ewarn message is
following:

1. This change is very important, many people may miss elog
messages: there are too many of them. Frankly, on a system with 2200+
packages this is just not possible for me to read all stuff (so I
usually ignore einfo stuff :)). Thus having several channels to
distribute this information will be a good idea.

2. This change affects a kernel. On large updates the kernel is
usually one of the first things to be updated. So this news item will
allow users to configure their kernel properly from the start and
avoid useless reconfiguration and recompilation of the kernel later.

Best regards,
Andrew Savchenko