kernel-devel: should yum install, not update?

[Sean Middleditch]

On Sun, 2005-01-23 at 00:40 +0200, Ville Skyttä wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-01-22 at 15:17 -0500, Sean Middleditch wrote:
> > On Sat, 2005-01-22 at 14:39 -0500, seth vidal wrote:
> > > On Sat, 2005-01-22 at 14:22 -0500, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> > > > Whatever is decided you probably want to have up2date default to the
> > > > same behavior for consistency.
> > > 
> > > make kernel-devel provide 'kernel' or 'kernel-modules' and it will
> > > happen automatically.
> > 
> > Out of curiosity, isn't having to have each package manager front-end
> > special case the kernel kinda grotesque?  Should maybe packages that can
> > be and prefer to be parallel installed over updated have an RPM header
> > that states this, so that any package renames or new packages that need
> > this behavior will just work?
> > 
> > One place it would be useful, for example, would be driver package for
> > out-of-tree drivers (yes, GPL ones, too).
> 
> There is a simple way to make this work, already applied by lots of 3rd
> party kernel stuff (modules, devel etc) package(r)s: put the uname of
> the kernel in question to the package's Name: field.

That doesn't work for the same reason Fedora doesn't do that with the
kernel packages themselves - upgrades.  Let's say Fedora pushes a new
kernel 2.6.12-0.1000.  Presumably around the same time whatever third-
party repository I'm grabbing my drivers from will push a new version of
the driver.  If the package had the kernel version in its package name,
it would not get automatically updated, and I'd have to manually install
the new drivers.  Laaaame... ;-)

If the drivers come the same way as the kernel this problem doesn't
exist.

There's also the point that it's still just silly to special case every
variation of the kernel packages that needs the install behavior.  It's
poor abstraction and poor design.