[elrepo-devel] Deprecating packages

[Akemi Yagi]

On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 12:38 PM, Phil Perry <phil at elrepo.org> wrote:

> This raises the question of how we go about deprecating an elrepo kmod.
>
> On IRC we briefly discussed a few options:
>
> 1. Announce to the ML that the package is deprecated and recommend the
> user 'rpm -e kmod-foo' removes the package in favour of the kernel
> module (as of kernel > X)
>
> 2. Release a self-destructing kmod update.
> Release an updated package with Requires kernel > 2.6.18-xyz.el5 (so
> that users staying with older kernels don't get the update) that doesn't
> contain the .conf override and thus allows the kernel module to become
> the default.
>
> 3. Release an update identical to the driver in RHEL.
> This doesn't appear to solve the issue, only delays it - the same issue
> arises when the driver gets updated down the line.
>
> Opinions?

I'd really like to find a clean way of removing obsoleted (no longer
needed) packages without human intervention if possible.  Unlike
regular packages, kABI-tracking kmods, once installed, will continue
to exist and the module gets symlink'd upon every kernel update until
the kABI breaks. And the (obsolete) module would take precedence over
the in-kernel module.

So, another potential (but obviously not the best) solution might be
to release an update that reverts the priority defined in
/etc/depmod.d/*.conf.

Akemi