On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 10:52:01AM +0200, Santiago Ruano Rincón wrote:
5. transitional packages along with a helper package (that fails or success during install) to prompt the user so they add non-free-firmware section when needed. Is there any reason why you are not considering 5.?
The danger we're trying to avoid is that a system with a working "something" (say, networking) gets upgraded, user reboots (or machine crashes, or there's a power failure, etc, etc.), the working "something" is now a not-working "something", and fixing it is really hard for the user who has no idea what happened and maybe doesn't have a network or a console or whatever any more. A package that fails during install will prevent the upgrade from completing, but will leave things in an in-between state until some action is taken, the upgrade restarted, and the upgrade manages to finish successfully. What happens if the reboot/crash/powercycle/etc happens during that in-between state? How do you make a firmware helper package that reliably prevents a kernel installation when the kernel doesn't have any dependencies on the firmware package, and also doesn't yank out the old working firmware, etc. I'm sure you can make the install explode, but making it reliably explode at just the right time seems harder. I guess this could all work, but I'm seeing a lot of potential for partial installs/failures with this approach and I suspect this would require transition code in a number of packages' preinsts, not a discrete "helper package".