DKMS for megaraid_sas

[Matt Domsch]

On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 08:28:59AM -0400, Daniel De Marco wrote:
> FYI,
> 
> the megaraid_sas rpm package is missing a dep on patch. I had to install
> it by hand othwerwise the yum installation would fail.

'dkms build' will fail w/o patch and gcc installed.  We could easily
enhance DKMS to recognize when patch isn't present and fail the build
step with a more appropriate error message.

I've intentionally kept the build tools (gcc etc.) out of the listed
Requires: for dkms, because dkms itself is usable on runtime systems
with prebuilt binaries.  The build tools only come into play when
rebuilding the source, but there's a very vocal crowd of people who do
_not_ want build tools installed on their runtime systems.  Patch
would fall into the 'build tools' category as well, it's only used
during 'dkms build' time.

For this reason we've talked about splitting DKMS into two packages:
dkms and dkms-build  (or something), where the latter would have the
build tools deps.  I haven't given this much thought in several years
though - I'm sure there are pitfalls I just don't remember them.

-- 
Matt Domsch
Linux Technology Strategist, Dell Office of the CTO
linux.dell.com & www.dell.com/linux