[Fedora-packaging] example kernel-module package

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Thu, 2005-06-30 at 17:11 +0300, Ville Skyttä wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-06-30 at 15:52 +0200, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> 
> > I split
> > the package in a userland package that creates a %{name}-kmsrc.rpm that
> > is used by the kernel-module-package as source. Something like this
> > would be neat package like nvidia als ati drivers where a single srpm is
> > quite big if you want to rebuild only the kernel-module
> 
> I don't see the point of the kmsrc package.
ACK.

> If you want to optimize SRPM download sizes, why not just supply a
> separate trimmed-down tarball containing only the kernel module bits in
> the kernel module SRPM (and include comments in the specfile how it was
> created from the upstream dist tarball, or include a script to do it in
> the source rpm)?  And if you want, another similar trimmed one in the
> userland SRPM containing only the non-kernel-module parts.
Actually, I fail to see where this approach _really_ reduces bandwidth
requirements.

Users who are rebuilding the rpms, should learn to download the srpm
once. Afterwards, they'll have it "on disk" and don't have to
re-download it again.

I would expect the high rate of downloads of kernel-module-*src.rpms you
might be seeing at Livna to originate from delays between kernel
releases in FC and kernel-module releases at Livna.

> Further, the sources and the build routines for the kernel modules are
> now split into two packages, which means also extra work and care from
> the maintainer.
Agreed. Also, it might not always be possible or not possible with
further effort, sometimes for technical reasons (Makefiles, build
infrastructure etc.), sometimes for licensing reasons ("Unmodified
sources").

> Isn't this just more work for both maintainers and end users?
Not for end users. They'd only see a kernel-module*.src.rpm and will not
know about the fact it had been split out elsewhere. But .. no matter if
the source are split into userland/kernel srpms they will have to
rebuild _one_ srpm.

Ralf