[Fedora-packaging] kmdl proposal and kmod flaws

Ville Skyttä ville.skytta at iki.fi
Tue Aug 8 21:29:08 UTC 2006


On Tue, 2006-08-08 at 14:04 -0500, Tom 'spot' Callaway wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-08-08 at 11:26 +0200, Axel Thimm wrote:
> > I've created a wiki page outlining the kmdl design as well as showing
> > the flaws of the current kernel module scheme ("kmod"):
> > 
> > 	  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/AxelThimm/kmdls

One thing completely missing from that is debuginfo packages.

The NEVR of the debuginfo package is derived from the name of the
*source* package, which means overlaps/unshippability of debuginfo
between builds unless 1) the source package's NEVR changes on every
rebuild, *including* just rebuilding it for a newer kernel using
different rpmbuild flags or whatever, or 2) the module packages
implement their own debuginfo package creation.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/113276

> The reason that third party repositories such as ATrpms have
> been so successful is because things just work.

Things certainly haven't "just work"ed without special user education
and making POLA violations a standard practice.  Dunno about the current
state of affairs with using that scheme, but I've seen the bug reports
elsewhere in the past.  Before depsolvers are adapted to do "the right
thing", their users need to remember to manually pull in module package
updates when a new kernel is installed.  Granted, with the suggested
scheme, they *can* do that without interference from other module
packages in more situations than with the current one, ditto with the
rpm CLI.

> I now believe that the benefits of overloading the name with kver
> outweigh any pain it causes

I have no doubts that it can be made to work (and there is still some
work to do, eg. debuginfo, depsolvers), but I'm still not convinced that
it's worth the trouble.  But that's moot if consensus says otherwise and
there's competent manpower available to do the work.




More information about the Fedora-packaging mailing list