Re: pcmcia-modules in woody

[brian@debian.org (Brian Mays)]

I (Brian Mays <bem5r@virginia.edu>) wrote:

> > The only way to automate this further is to *force* the kernel-image
> > packages to build the corresponding pcmcia-modules packages, since
> > they contain everything needed to do so. ...

Adrian Bunk <bunk@fs.tum.de> replied:

> This is IMHO a good solution.

Well, from what I remember, John Robinson has already implemented this
feature in his kernel-image package.  He has reported to me that it
works quite well.  Another maintainer, Eduard Bloch, might also have
implemented it, but I'm don't know at this moment.  Take a look at their
packages to see how this can be done.

There is only one catch left.  Currently, the pcmcia-cs source still
needs the kernel source (and hence, needs the KSRC variable to be
defined) to build the pcmcia-cs package.  It should be possible to avoid
this requirement, however, and I'm pretty sure that I can truly divorce
the pcmcia-cs build from the kernel sources.  If this can be done, then
running "dpkg-buildpackage" will build the kernel-independent packages:
pcmcia-cs and pcmcia-source without any additional requirements.  (If
the KPATH variable is set, then pcmcia-modules packages will be built as
well, but as mentioned above, these should be built by the kernel-image
sources, not by the pcmcia-cs sources.)

In fact, I have hacked together an experimental package this afternoon
which appears to be able to build the pcmcia-cs package without using
the kernel sources.  I'm uploading this package now.  It needs testing,
however, since I don't know yet whether this mechanism will work on
other architectures.  Nevertheless, I suspect that it will work.

Assuming that the new package works, the only problem that remains is
how to get all of the kernel-image sources to automatically build the
pcmcia-modules packages as well.  That is, how to make all of these
packages implement John Robinson's technique or something similar.

- Brian

P.S. The two RC bugs cited in this thread were old bugs that should have
been closed before now.