On Thu, Mar 30, 2017 at 10:04:24PM +0100, Ben Hutchings wrote:
On Thu, 2017-03-30 at 09:22 +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
Source: linux
Version: 4.10~rc6-1~exp1
Severity: wishlist
X-Debbugs-CC: open-ath9k-htc-firmware@packages.debian.org
Now that open-ath9k-htc-firmware has been accepted into Debian
unstable, please add "Recommends: firmware-ath9k-htc" to the
metadata for the linux-image-* packages in Debian experimental.
Not many linux-image-* users have ath9k-htc hardware so I do not see
how this recommendation can make sense here.
The package should have provided appropriate AppStream metainformation
so Debian should be able to suggest installing it when the device is
plugged in for the first time.
As this firmware has gone through at least one ABI bump, I think we
need to plan for a future ABI bump.
So far the idea was to upload a package named firmware-ath9k-htc-1.5.0
after the next ABI bump. There's no reason why
firmware-ath9k-htc-1.5.0 shouldn't be able to co-exist on the same
system with e.g. firmware-ath9k-htc-1.6.0, as the user should be able
to choose different kernel versions on boot, and hence different
firmware versions will be appropriate.
Therefore:
- You should not name the files as simply '1.dev.0' versions, but by
the implemented ABI version (as the driver expects by default).
The code that's currently packaged is definitely not 1.4.0 code, it
got some non-trivial changes (not affecting ABI though) after the
1.4.0 was released. So naming an intermediate version in any way other
than 1.dev.0 would only add to the confusion IMHO.
Probably it would make sense to have the minor number indicate a
subversion of same-ABI firmwares, but for some reasons the kernel
driver maintainers decided against that.
I hope Oleksij will correct me if I'm missing something here.