[ovs-dev] ideas for improving kernel module build

[Ben Pfaff]

I've been thinking a bit about the Linux kernel module build.  It
doesn't look all that much like how other Linux kernel modules build
themselves.  The "configure" step is really odd in that context.

I think that we could get rid of the "configure" step.  All of the
Linux-related configure pieces are really simple.  I think that we
could embed them all into GNU make code within a Makefile.  And then
you could just run "make", possibly pointing an environment variable
to the right directory.  This would be much more like how other
external kernel modules typically build.  I think that proper
dependencies would even be possible, so that it wouldn't be necessary
to rerun a configuration step when KSRC changed or when some other
kernel got checked out in the directory that KSRC pointed to.

An orthogonal change would be to move "datapath/linux-2.6" to just
"linux".

I haven't done any work on either of these.  I'm just brainstorming
here.

Thoughts?