[Fedora-packaging] Re: kernel module packaging

[Jon Masters]

On 6/5/06, Tom 'spot' Callaway <tcallawa at redhat.com> wrote:

> > In fact, I'm not really calling for major packaging changes - by
> > making a few changes to kmodtool behind the scenes, all of this is
> > abstracted from the packager, who is free to demand a specific kernel
> > or just let the dependency resolution figure out if the kernel and
> > module will be compatible at RPM install time. The only issue really
> > is how this would affect official "policy" with regards to kernel
> > dependencies as you hinted at above.
>
> If kmodtool starts providing this by default, then there would be no
> need for the Requires: v-r in the policy. I suspect you'd need to
> convince the kmodtool author(s), not me. :)

That's what I'm trying to do at the moment :-)

With that done, there's no need to make user-visible changes to the
packaging process at this stage, except that we can introduce a >=
type dependency on the base kernel release if it's felt that a kernel
version should be included in addition to the binary dependency
information.

To check out what I mean, take a rawhide kernel and do:

rpm -q --provides kernel

on it. You'll see a set of dependencies, one per directory of the
kernel source used to build that kernel. For example kernel(kernel) =
blah means that the checksum for built-ins in the /kernel subdirectory
is blah. This is then matched against in the dependencies of the
module.

Part 2. I've also spoken to the SuSE folks about agreeing on a joint
packaging standard for driver updates that could be used in Fedora,
OpenSUSE and potentially in commercial products at a later stage.
There's a channel for communication there so I want to explore that in
the longer term - having a common set of RPM macros that encapsulate
our differences and present a single spec file format. I don't know if
you folks will love or hate that idea :-)

Jon.