Arch Linux

ConnorBehan

Package Maintainer (PM)

From: Long Island NY

Registered: 2007-07-05

Posts: 1,359

Website

A few things I don't understand about the kernel PKGBUILD

1. Why is firmware a separate package now? Is there a practical reason why we'd want firmware to be a different version than the rest of the kernel? (Or no firmware for that matter?)

2. Why do the ARCH patches recreate ".orig" files? This makes the patch needlessly huge as you can tell patch to do this with "-b".

3. Why is the _kernelname variable set to ${pkgname#kernel26}? As far as I can tell this sets it equal to nothing as there is no variable called pkgname#kernel26. I mean, just try this script:

#!/bin/bash
pkgname=kernel26
_kernelname=${pkgname#kernel26}
echo ${_kernelname}

Thanks for telling me what I can't figure out!

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Great things come in tar.xz packages.

Allan

Pacman

From: Brisbane, AU

Registered: 2007-06-09

Posts: 11,385

Website

Re: A few things I don't understand about the kernel PKGBUILD

\
3. Why is the _kernelname variable set to ${pkgname#kernel26}? As far as I can tell this sets it equal to nothing as there is no variable called pkgname#kernel26. I mean, just try this script:

#!/bin/bash
pkgname=kernel26
_kernelname=${pkgname#kernel26}
echo ${_kernelname}

Thanks for telling me what I can't figure out!

That allows for easy customization.   e.g. pkgname=kernel26-snapshot then _kernelname=-snapshot.  You can then append that on to file names etc.

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bangkok_manouel

Member

From: indicates a starting point

Registered: 2005-02-07

Posts: 1,556

Re: A few things I don't understand about the kernel PKGBUILD

1. Why is firmware a separate package now? Is there a practical reason why we'd want firmware to be a different version than the rest of the kernel? (Or no firmware for that matter?)

This is to avoid firmware files conflicts when installing a custom kernel. Previously, you had to use the force flag in pacman or it would complain about files already existing and abort the install.