On Wed, 2006-12-13 at 08:14 +1100, Craig Small wrote: > On Tue, Dec 12, 2006 at 01:40:47PM -0500, Jerry DuVal wrote: > > Is it bad practice to make a package depend on a specific kernel image? > > This might be a loaded question, but I was just trying to get an opinion. > > All of the boxes using this package are of the same configuration. > > Generally speaking, yes it is bad practice. kernel modules packages do, > but they are tightly coupled to the kernel (could be considered part of > it), so it is ok. > > Probably for anything else it is a case of bad programming. At the very > least they should try to run, notice the missing feature because the > kernel is less than version X and gracefully exit. > > We live in a strange world though, there is probably some other rare > reasons why you could depend on a specific version. The basic problem is that presence of a kernel package does not imply presence of the desired patch/enabled feature in that package, nor that the running kernel is the installed one. What you need to do is twofold: depend upon the presence of the ABI required, if you can get the kernel package maintainers to add an appropriate provides: entry, and secondly handle the absence of that ABI gracefully at runtime. -Rob -- GPG key available at: <http://www.robertcollins.net/keys.txt>.
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