[aur-general] Kernel version requirement

[Mark Weiman]

On Tue, 2019-05-07 at 21:25 +0200, Julien Nicoulaud via aur-general wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> In the oomd package <https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/oomd/>;, I put a
> linux>=4.20 dependency requirement since it requires the new resource
> pressure metrics <https://facebookmicrosites.github.io/psi/> introduced in
> linux 4.20.
> 
> But as another user pointed out, some of the alternatives kernel packages
> declare provides=("linux=${pkgver}"), but several of the most popular do
> not (linux-lts, linux-dzen, linux-hardened).
> 
> What we would be correct way to handle this ? Should I just drop the
> version requirement (since having a kernel>=4.20 does not imply you are
> running this one anyway) ? Or should these packages be improved ?

You would probably want to omit the dependency entirely on top of dropping the
version requirement (since linux is part of base).

I assume the reason that linux-lts, and other kernel packages don't have a
provides field (and why my AUR package, linux-vfio, omits this as well) is
because they do not provide linux, they provide an alternate kernel (e.g.
linux-lts provides linux-lts, not linux; linux-vfio provides linux-vfio, not
linux).

Mark