[Pkg-acpi-devel] Bug#564169: Bug#564169: acpi-support should depend on rfkill

[Sebastian Leske]

Hi,

thanks for the prompt reply.

> On Fri, Jan 08, 2010 at 06:35:57AM +0100, Sebastian Leske wrote:
>> acpi-support should depend on rfkill, as it is used in 
>> /etc/acpi/ibm-wireless.sh
> 
> A Suggest has to be sufficient because it is not needed for other
laptops.
> But ibm-wireless.sh should also test for its existance.

Thanks, but I fear that will not really help.

Put yourself into the position of a user: They install acpi-support because
someone told them it will make the Thinkpad's special buttons work.

They press Fn-F5, but nothing happens. They look into the system logs:
nothing. They conclude that acpi-support does not support Fn-F5.

Your fix will not really help that user.

The simplest thing would be to just depend on rfkill. I understand that not
all laptops will need it, but then again, it's small ;-). The problem with
recommends/suggests is that it's difficult for a user to tell which
packages they need; users may not know which packages they really need.

If depending on rfkill is not possible, I'd suggest:

* Explain in the package description where rfkill is needed:
"Install rfkill to enable toggling WLAN on Thinkpad laptops."

and

* Put some hint into ibm-wireless.sh about rfkill, e.g.:
Replace
test -x /usr/sbtest -x /usr/sbin/rfkill  || exit 0
with

if (! test -x /usr/sbin/rfkill)
then
logger "Error: Please install package rfkill to enable toggling of wireless
devices." ;exit 0
fi

(or similar). The idea is to give the user a hint why the functionality
isn't working.

Of course, this is really a problem with recommends/suggests; I believe it
could help if they had an extra field to explain why the packages is
recommended / suggested. Maybe that'll come some day...