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Re: Meta packages for modules

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On Mon, 2026-08-10 at 10:13 +0200, Bastian Blank wrote:
[...]
> One of my secondary goals, not sure how possible they are within Debian, is to split away rarely used modules, like most other distributions now do as well.
> This however now requires another image package to pull this in.
> 
> So I propose that we also introduce meta packages for the modules.
> This way we can offer the same guarantees then with the headers packages:
> - All versioned packages are of the same version
> - All meta packages are of the same version (and with it all the versioned packages for this version)
> 
> Users can select which modules package they want: the default one or the cloud one, just by installing the corresponding meta package.

But modules are duplicated between those, right?

> They can also opt-in into the extra modules by installing this separate meta package.

Do you plan to extend kernel-wedge to do that, or are you thinking of
something a bit simpler?

> All packages are kept in sync by the base dependency.
> 
> The package linux-image-cloud-amd64 is kept for correct upgrades.
> 
> Bastian
> 
> ## Proposed package layout
> ```
> Package: linux-image-7.2-amd64
> Depends:
>  linux-binary-7.2-amd64 (= ${Source-Version}),
>  linux-modules-7.2-amd64 (= ${Source-Version}) | linux-modules-main-7.2-amd64 (= ${Source-Version}),
> 
> Package: linux-image-amd64
> Depends:
>  linux-base-amd64 (= ${Source-Version}),
>  linux-image-7.2-amd64 (= ${Source-Version}),
>  linux-modules-amd64 (= ${Source-Version}) | linux-modules-main-amd64 (= ${Source-Version}),
> 
> Package: linux-image-cloud-amd64
> Depends:
>  linux-base-amd64 (= ${Source-Version}),
>  linux-image-7.2-amd64 (= ${Source-Version}),
>  linux-modules-cloud-amd64 (= ${Source-Version})
> 
> Package: linux-modules-7.2-amd64
> Depends:
>  linux-base-7.2-amd64 (= ${Source-Version}),
> Provides:
>  linux-modules-main-7.2-amd64 (= ${Source-Version}),
> Conflicts:
>  linux-modules-main-7.2-amd64,
> Replaces:
>  linux-modules-main-7.2-amd64,
> 
> Package: linux-modules-cloud-7.2-amd64
> Depends:
>  linux-base-7.2-amd64 (= ${Source-Version}),
> Provides:
>  linux-modules-main-7.2-amd64 (= ${Source-Version}),
> Conflicts:
>  linux-modules-main-7.2-amd64,
> Replaces:
>  linux-modules-main-7.2-amd64,
[...]

I think the virtual packages make this unnecessarily confusing.  To me,
linux-modules-7.2-amd64, as the default modules package for 7.2-amd64,
would also be seen as the "main" modules package.  Why not use only the
real package names?

Ben.

-- 
Ben Hutchings
Design a system any fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.

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Meta packages for modules Bastian Blank <waldi@debian.org> - 2026-08-10 10:40 +0200
  Re: Meta packages for modules Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk> - 2026-09-23 20:10 +0200
    Re: Meta packages for modules Bastian Blank <waldi@debian.org> - 2026-09-23 20:50 +0200

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