On Sat, 2005-01-22 at 12:33 +0000, Thaddeus H. Black wrote: > For what it might be worth (IANADD), I would support Martin's point of > view. I concur. > > What's the use of package management if you don't go all the way? > > The question seems sensible. I would respectfully ask the same > question. The existing kernel practice does seem to allow some room for > improvement, at least in theory. Martin illustrates why. Does Martin > not make a valid point? I think so. It's all about building an interface between the user and the system. Debian has been very good at this, although exceptions have been made for practical reasons, and they've stuck. While building your own kernel image should certainly be supported, I think Debian shoots itself -- and its users -- in the foot by introducing or encouraging practices that lead to a situation that the package management system cannot handle. The way to build your own kernel is with make-kpkg, and that way will ensure your installed kernel image is registered with dpkg and will interact properly with other packages. Installing random files in random places and having package installation scripts checking for their existance or their contents certainly spells trouble, or at least puts an ever-increasing burden on the package maintainer. Better to handle such things at a higher level (dpkg) and declare other ways unsafe. For another perspective, think about the ongoing work to support other kernels than Linux. Presently, promising work is apparently being done on both Debian GNU/Hurd and Debian GNU/FreeBSD kernels. There are already packages that are Linux-kernel-specific and they will need support in the package management system to depend on "kernel-image-linux" or something more specific like "kernel-image-linux-2.6". (One may assume that "kernel-image", representing any kernel, is an essential package, always installed.) So it's not just about different versions of Linux, it's about different kernels altogether. And there should be a way to specify such dependencies on the package management system level. Cheers, -- Fabian Fagerholm <fabbe@paniq.net>
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