[aur-general] Packaging with DKMS support

[Jason Melton]

2011/3/24 Ng Oon-Ee <ngoonee at gmail.com>:
> On Thu, 2011-03-24 at 12:16 +0900, Jason Melton wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> Over on the rtl8192se package[1], we have been discussing how to best
>> support DKMS in packaging (at the AUR level), and I would like to ask
>> for wider and more experienced comments. I have put my thoughts here
>> and in more detail on my personal Arch wiki page[2].
>
> Quick problem, what happens when the kernel version updates? For example
> modules are currently in /lib/modules/2.6.38-Arch/kernel/* (from
> [testing]) but when 2.6.39 comes out the location changes, and the
> package needs to be reinstalled in any case.
>
>

Hello,

In the case of the non-DKMS user, there is no change - nor should
there be - they always need to reinstall the package anyway. This is
what we want, because we don't want to change how things behave for
the non-DKMS user.

In the case of the DKMS user, DKMS will rebuild and install the driver
in the correct location for the new kernel. This will happen even if
the move is from 2.6.38.* to 2.6.39.* - or whatever change there is.
The "DEST_MODULE_LOCATION[0]" tells DKMS where to place the built
driver, and for this line "/kernel" is a reference to
/lib/modules/<kernelversion>/kernel.

A drawback is that, in this case DKMS will create a file that is no
longer tracked by pacman. But, since an updated package must be
released soon anyway for the non-DKMS users, this situation will not
last long. An alternative would be updating the information in the
pacman db, but that's really pushing things I think.

== Further note ==
There was an error in the install file, where I left out the dkms
stuff for post_upgrade. I think everyone can get the point without it,
but I'll post a corrected version just in case.[1]

[1]http://paste.pocoo.org/show/358794/