Proposal: pci_driver() tags for dkms rpms

[Michael_E_Brown at Dell.com]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Matt Domsch [mailto:Matt_Domsch at dell.com] 
> Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2006 9:15 AM
> To: Brown, Michael E
> Cc: dkms-devel-Lists
> Subject: Re: Proposal: pci_driver() tags for dkms rpms
> 
> 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" ?

Sorry, no good answer here. Yum does the wrong thing in response to
multiple packages providing a dependency.

Yum will guarantee that _some_ package is installed. There is no
guarantee that it is "right". One would think that any package that
provides the pci_driver(...) line would work for the specified card,
though.
--
Michael