Re: [PROPOSAL] update-binfmts - manages the binfmt_misc kernel module

[Jacob Kuntz <jake@megabite.net>]

Colin Watson (cjw44@cam.ac.uk) wrote:
> How about having the kernel image packages that make-kpkg produces
> provide a virtual package for each of their modules, or for each class
> of modules? I can see the list becoming quite large in pathological
> cases, though, and I suppose it would be difficult to maintain as the
> kernel develops. (Not to mention that the many people who don't use
> make-kpkg would have to be supported in some way ...)
> 
> But I can certainly imagine that many packages would want to have this
> sort of module dependency: for instance, I saw mention of lm-sensors
> recently, and it might want to depend on something like
> kernel-module-i2c.

perhaps the answer is to not use the Depends field as it exists today.
create a new field called Kernel-Depends. i'm sure there's some way to probe
a kernel/module tree for which options a given kernel has compiled in
without having the configuration file that was used to build it. someone
would need to build an external program that could be called from apt and
take a Kernel-Depends line as an argument. we would certianly need to update
the package tools to support this.

i probably could have explained that better. do you see what i'm getting at
here? does this sound like a possibility?

-- 
(jacob kuntz)                    jpk@cape.com jake@{megabite,underworld}.net
(megabite systems)                       "think free speech, not free beer."