On Sat, Jan 22, 2005 at 08:19:33AM +0000, Martin Kittel wrote: > I am still favouring the solution using "Depends" and scripts to detect > whether > you are running the right kernel.
Depends enforce that the depended-upon package is installed on the system -- meaning that it's unpacked and configured. It can *not* ensure that a particular kernel is running on the system. Furthermore, it is *not* required that Debian users use Debian kernel packages; there are a large number of users who roll their own kernels, and even though it's easier than ever to build packages for them using kernel-package, there is no requirement that they do so. For both of these reasons, packages for userspace software do not express kernel requirements using the Depends: field. This is not something that you should be changing unilaterally without first getting a consensus in the Debian development community that this is the direction we want to go. > So from my point of view there still is no valid alternative to declaring a > "Depends" on kernel-image-2.6 and having run-time checks for the right kernel > version (whereever possible). People running 2.6 without having it registerd > with dpkg can always tell dpkg to ignore the dependency. You most *certainly* should not be encouraging users to override dpkg's dependency handling, that's a sure sign that your dependencies are wrong! Using runtime checks is the most appropriate solution here. > And finally, to come back to my initial question: Is there a way of declaring > a > dependency on NPTL other than depending on kernel-image-2.6? Documenting it in the package preinst and/or the README.Debian? -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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