FS#59454 - Stop repackaging dkms packages with every new Linux version

Attached to Project: Community Packages
Opened by Tomasz Pakuła (Lawstorant) - Wednesday, 25 July 2018, 23:16 GMT
Last edited by Doug Newgard (Scimmia) - Wednesday, 25 July 2018, 23:46 GMT
Task Type General Gripe
Category Packages
Status Closed
Assigned To No-one
Architecture All
Severity Medium
Priority Normal
Reported Version
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 0
Private No

Details

Description:

acpi_call-dkms, nvidia-dkms, nvidia-390xx-dkms and many more are repackaged and version-bumped with every Linux release. This is unneeded and causes additional internet traffic, takes storage space and generally party defies the idea behind dkms. pacman resolves dkms hooks and rebuilds kernel accordingly. For example, acpi_call has been bumped 145 (sic!) times, that means, in some cases, the same package had to be re-downloaded over a hundred times for no apparent reason.

Steps to reproduce:
Install acpi_call-dkms and just wait for a kernel update.
This task depends upon

Closed by  Doug Newgard (Scimmia)
Wednesday, 25 July 2018, 23:46 GMT
Reason for closing:  Not a bug
Additional comments about closing:  That's how split packages work
Comment by Tomasz Pakuła (Lawstorant) - Wednesday, 25 July 2018, 23:19 GMT
And what's with the weird dependencies? Why make them, so dkms packages only work with the newest kernel? That's completely backwards form what dkms is trying to achieve.
Comment by Eli Schwartz (eschwartz) - Wednesday, 25 July 2018, 23:48 GMT
What dependencies, acpi_call-dkms does not depend on any kernel at all. It only depends on dkms.

As for it being bumped so often, it is a split package which builds the package for [core]/linux as well as the dkms source package that doesn't depend on a kernel.

Personally, I don't like this and I created a templated PKGBUILD for my broadcom-wl package which just makedepends on the dkms package and builds the module using dkms then packages it, which means it operates on a different release cycle but doesn't have to duplicate the work of tracking sources, maintaining modprobe files, etc.

But I believe it's the only kernel module packaged like that right now.

Loading...