[Fedora-packaging] packages which require the kernel package

Matthew Miller mattdm at fedoraproject.org
Mon Mar 10 19:22:02 UTC 2014


When Fedora is in a container (a la Docker), the kernel comes
from the host, not the installed package set. I noticed a number of packages
which actually have a requirement on the kernel package. This isn't very
helpful, since the installed package says nothing about the running one, and
forcing the package doesn't help.

For many of these, the requirement is actually that the running kernel have
a certain feature, and the hope is that the package version check will do
it. For others, like ipset, I'm not quite sure -- there's a spec file
comment that says "This is developed hand in hand with a kernel module", but
it then just says "Requires: kernel".

I think quemu-sanity-check may be the only one that actually really wants a
kernel. Possibly libguestfs too -- I didn't dig too deepy.

There aren't actually a lot:

autofs
fedfs-utils-lib / fedfs-utils-server (from fedfs-utils)
firehol
ipset
libguestfs
lldpad
mod_selinux
netlabel_tools
ovirt-guest-agent-common (from ovirt-guest-agent)
pulseaudio
qemu-sanity-check
sysprof
systemtap-devel / systemtap-runtime (from systemtap)
vdsm

Some of these probably have very good reasons for really needing the kernel
package to be there. I'm pretty sure that many of the others don't.

I propose that (in Rawhide) we simply drop the requires line from all of the
ones that are simply trying to state that they need a kernel version greater
than the kernel version currently in Rawhide (right now, 3.14 rc).

I think that would cover all of the above except Richard W.M. Jones's stuff,
and ipset, which I *think* doesn't really need it. (And systemtap-devel
should probably change its requirement on kernel-devel to have the version
information there.)

Optionally, vdsm is the only one with a requirement on anything greater than
the 3.9.5 kernel which originally shipped with F19 (but less than the
3.11.10 that shipped with F20). That one could be left until F19 is EOL.

Most of these aren't at any risk of actually getting pulled into a container
(and don't belong there), but the requirements also seem wrong so I thought
we might as well go and clean them up. What do you think?


-- 
Matthew Miller    --   Fedora Project    --    <mattdm at fedoraproject.org>


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