On Tue, 2020-03-10 at 23:31 -0400, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote: > Thanks to Ben and Jason for following up here. > > On Wed 2020-03-11 02:52:43 +0000, Ben Hutchings wrote: > > We definitely can't add a Provides on "real" kernel packages, because > > this breaks auto-removal of old packages. > > I'm not sure i understand this. by "real" kernel packages i think you > mean something like linux-image-5.4.0-4-amd64. > > If linux-image-5.5.0-1-amd64 were installed, with such a Provides:, and > then linux-image-5.5.0-2-amd64 were installed, also with such a > Provides:, then why wouldn't autoremoval of linux-image-5.5.0-1-amd64 > still work? The system would still have the Provides: satisfied. > > Feel free to point me at some piece of Apt or dpkg documentation if i'm > missing something obvious.
I don't know where/if it's explicitly documented, but it would be with apt if anywhere. If some of the packages providing a virtual package are explicitly installed, and some auto-installed, it could reasonably auto-remove the latter group (though I don't think it does). But if all of them are auto-installed, which will be the case for kernel packages, it can't tell which should be kept and which removed. > > We could possibly add it to the meta-packages, but there would have to > > be a plan for how we can drop it later (and have the Wireguard > > user-space just assume the kernel supports it). > > When we can just assume that the kernel supports it, we might just drop > the "wireguard" package entirely, and supply only the "wireguard-tools" > package (maybe at that point, we make "wireguard-tools" itself Provide: > wireguard). But nothing will auto-remove the wireguard package. So you would have to keep it as a transitional package for one release cycle, even when it depends on just wireguard-tools. Yes, this is annoyingly complicated. That's why I need there to be a plan. Ben. > At that point, we certainly wouldn't need the Provides: on > the kernel. > > > We definitely shouldn't accumulate Provides for every component that > > was previously packaged out-of-tree. > > I can see how that would be problematic :) > > --dkg -- Ben Hutchings Humour is the best antidote to reality.
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