[aur-general] Kernel version requirement

[Mark Weiman]

On Tue, 2019-05-07 at 15:47 -0400, Eli Schwartz via aur-general wrote:
> On 5/7/19 3:25 PM, 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=${pkgver}"), but several of the most popular do
> > not (linux-lts, linux-dzen, linux-hardened).
> 
> Those packages are incorrect as they do not provide /boot/vmlinuz-linux
> or /lib/modules/${version}-ARCH/, and are specifically designed to be
> co-installable with the actual core/linux package. Their provides=()
> will therefore cause errors for users who have installed out-of-tree
> modules targeting a different kernel package.
> 
> linux-libre tries to get around this by also providing LINUX-ABI_VERSION
> but AFAIK it is the only package to do so.
> 
> > 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 ?
> 
> Consider java (sorry!) for inspiration here. One can have java-runtime
> as a dependency if an application can use any version of java, but if
> you need a specific version of java, depend on e.g. java-runtime=11.
> This does not guarantee the user will use this version, but it does
> guarantee that they have it installed and provides pacman hints so that
> users know why the software does not work on other versions.
> 
> This works because there is a standard for all java packages to
> provides=(java-runtime=$majorver)
> 

This isn't quite the case for kernels though. The kernels in the official
repositories don't provide a line like "provides=(kernel=$pkgver)" type of
line.

Is there a plan to change this to include such a line in the packages?

Mark