Hi all,

The linux-firmware package in core-testing has been through some churn as of late, as I've been trying to split the firmware properly and ran into several issues in the process. I apologize for the mess.

Unfortunately, we're not done. This time it's a Pacman limitation involving symlinks and multiple packages that I don't remember how to handle properly. The best solution I see is instructing a manual intervention. Is this how we handled this situation in the past? Does anybody have a better idea?

Draft:

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With `20250613.12fe085f-5`, we split our firmware into several vendor-focused packages. `linux-firmware` is now an empty package depending on our default set of firmware.

Unfortunately, this coincided with upstream reorganizing the symlink layout of the NVIDIA firmware, resulting in a situation that Pacman cannot handle. When attempting to upgrade from `20250508.788aadc8-2` or earlier, you will see the following errors:

    linux-firmware-nvidia: /usr/lib/firmware/nvidia/ad103 exists in filesystem
    linux-firmware-nvidia: /usr/lib/firmware/nvidia/ad104 exists in filesystem
    linux-firmware-nvidia: /usr/lib/firmware/nvidia/ad106 exists in filesystem
    linux-firmware-nvidia: /usr/lib/firmware/nvidia/ad107 exists in filesystem

To progress with the system upgrade, first remove `linux-firmware`, then reinstall it as part of the upgrade:

    # pacman -Rdd linux-firmware

    # pacman -Syu linux-firmware

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Greetings,

Jan