[Pkg-dkms-maint] Bug#887263: dkms should depend on e2fsprogs explicitly

[Mario.Limonciello at dell.com]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Pkg-dkms-maint [mailto:pkg-dkms-maint-
> bounces+mario_limonciello=dell.com at lists.alioth.debian.org] On Behalf Of
> Andreas Henriksson
> Sent: Sunday, January 21, 2018 3:47 AM
> To: Helmut Grohne <helmut at subdivi.de>; 887263 at bugs.debian.org
> Subject: [Pkg-dkms-maint] Bug#887263: dkms should depend on e2fsprogs
> explicitly
> 
> On Sun, Jan 14, 2018 at 08:03:50PM +0100, Helmut Grohne wrote:
> > Package: dkms
> [...]
> > /usr/sbin/dkms contains mke2fs. According to file it is a Bourne-Again shell script,
> ASCII text executable, with very long lines
> [...]
> 
> Indeed dkms uses both mke2fs and mkdosfs. There's no relation from dkms
> towards dosfstools specified in the dkms package either, which would
> otherwise be a sign of how important these commands are to dkms
> functionality.
> 
> The commands are (only) used from a function called
> "make_driver_disk_floppy" which in turn is invoked (via a call chain)
> from "make_driver_disk" and that function checks distro which seems to
> be specified from commandline flag -d <distro>. (Note that there's no
> debian alternative! There is one for ubuntu though.)
> The command to invoke the code path seems to be something like
> 'dkms mkdriverdisk -d <distro> [...]'.
> Note that while today we can probably consider floppies to not be so
> common anymore, the default media type in dkms mkdriverdisk is floppy.
> 
> I'm not sure how important this functionality is, but the entire thing
> seems to be pretty overlooked from a Debian perspective which leads
> me to assume a Suggests (rather than Recommends or Depends) might be
> suitable.

I would agree Suggests makes sense in this context.

> 
> I'm left with a few questions that it would be great to hear maintainers
> view on....
> * Is the mkdriverdisk functionality useful at all these days? Maybe
>   it should just be patched out (and possibly even removed upstream)?
It's (obviously) not too useful for Debian, but I believe it's useful for other
distros.

> * If useful, shouldn't someone work on a debian distro code-path?
The ubuntu code path relies on changes that were made to include a special
driver disk handler in d-i.  I'm unsure that it made it back to Debian.

If it did, then it should be as simple as recognizing both Debian and Ubuntu
as the same codepaths.

> * Shouldn't floppies be considered uncommon enough that the default
>   should be changed to something else?

Probably.  I think it is worth proposing this to upstream issue tracker.

> All of these are off-topic in this particular bug report though and
> separate bug reports should probably be opened if there's a need
> to discuss any of that. Possibly upstream rather than in Debian.
> 
> My conclusion here is that it's likely not the end of the world if
> we just closed this bug report. If a package relationship should be
> added using 'Suggests: dosfstools, e2fsprogs' would likely be the
> most suitable. Maintainers view on this would be nice to hear!

I'm not active in DKMS anymore (Someone else in Dell maintains it now),
but hope my comments are useful since I had some history from this.