RPM roadmapping

[Jeremy Katz]

On Fri, 2007-07-27 at 17:16 +0200, KH KH wrote:
> 2007/7/27, Panu Matilainen <pmatilai at redhat.com>:
> > Not everybody is on rpm-maint list and we'd like to hear the wishes of
> > (Fedora) developers/packagers too. So: what have you always wanted to do
> > with rpm, but wasn't able to? Or the other way around: what you always
> > wished rpm would do for you? What always annoyed you out of your mind?
>
> I was wondering if rpm can register aliases when it bundles external
> kernel module (*.ko)  like this iwl3945, so it can tell which module
> (external, in it's own rpm / or internally from the kernel) is a
> candidate for some specific hardware...

There's nothing that stops us from adding something to auto-add provides
based on modalias.  The "problem" is mostly that it ends up adding a
substantial number of provides which bloats the amount of data that has
to be looked at, downloaded, etc

> Maybe if it can tell more deeply, see that the module is requesting a
> specific firmware as a dependency (and versionned firmwares is what
> should be set as as rule, probably not only for intel firmwares ?!)
> This would be a feature that beginners would appreciate!

And similarly, firmware info can be extracted as long as the modules
export it.  The MODULE_FIRMWARE stuff should help there as it gets used
in more modules

Jeremy