Linux kernel and packages providing kernel-source

[Aurelien Jarno]

Hi all,

The Linux kernel source packages are all providing a virtual package
called kernel-source, so that other packages such as kernel patches can
depend on them. The freebsd kernel (kfreebsd5-source) was recently
included in Debian (mainly for the GNU/kFreeBSd port) and also provides
kernel-source.

This seems to confuse the users (what I understand) as we received a bug
telling that aptitude proposes to install kfreebsd5-source when installing
a kernel-patch.

That's why we've deciced to provide the freebsd-kernel-source virtual
package instead of kernel-source.

I think it would be nice that the Linux kernel-source packages follow this
policy, and thus provide linux-kernel-source. I don't say all package
should be reuploaded, but maybe in a first time, the newest uploads could
provide both kernel-source and linux-kernel-source, and the kernel patches
depends on kernel-source | linux-kernel-source. Then in a second time it
would be possible to remove references to kernel-source.

I would like to have your comments on that.

Bye,
Aurelien

-- 
  .''`.  Aurelien Jarno               GPG: 1024D/F1BCDB73
 : :' :  Debian GNU/Linux developer | Electrical Engineer
 `. `'   aurel32@debian.org         | aurelien@aurel32.net
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