Proposal: pci_driver() tags for dkms rpms

[Matt Domsch]

On Tue, Mar 07, 2006 at 10:58:29AM -0600, Michael_E_Brown at dell.com wrote:
>    Problem statement:
>            Given a yum/apt/rhn/etc repository containing DKMS RPMs, it is not
>    possible to figure out which RPMS are required for any specific system in
>    an automated way.
> 
>    Proposed solution:
>            Add a "Provides:" tag to each RPM for each device supported,
>    automatically generated by DKMS. There are two formats for these tags. One
>    is for standard PCI devices, and the tag format is one of the following:
> 
>      1) pci_driver(ven_0xNNNN_dev_0xNNNN_subven_0xNNNN_subdev_0xNNNN)
>      2) pci_driver(ven_0xNNNN_dev_0xNNNN)
>      3)
>      pci_driver(ven_0xNNNN_dev_0xNNNN_subven_0xNNNN_subdev_0xNNNN)/system(ven_0xNNNN_dev_0xNNNN)
>      4) pci_driver(ven_0xNNNN_dev_0xNNNN)/system(ven_0xNNNN_dev_0xNNNN)
>
>            Anybody have thoughts, questions, additional ideas?

I'm inclined to like the idea.

How would yum and up2date handle the case of multiple kernels
providing the above tags, and multiple kernel module packages (DKMS
format, Novell format, Fedora format, ...), any of which would be
present in the universe of repositories seen by any single system?
What's to guarantee that the "right" package providing this would get
pulled in, given multiple providers, and what's the definition of
"right" ?

Thanks,
Matt


-- 
Matt Domsch
Software Architect
Dell Linux Solutions linux.dell.com & www.dell.com/linux
Linux on Dell mailing lists @ http://lists.us.dell.com