Bug#715398: please add a bbswitch-source package

[David Kalnischkies]

On Mon, Jul 8, 2013 at 9:20 PM, Russ Allbery <rra at debian.org> wrote:
> David Kalnischkies <kalnischkies+debian at gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Currently src:bbswitch builds only a bbswitch-dkms package for usage
>> with dkms tools. It would be nice if you could add a bbswitch-source
>> package for module-assistant so that users can build proper debian
>> packages for the bbswitch module for the kernel they use.
>
> I'm not the bbswitch maintainer, so this is something of an aside, but
> I've been considering dropping the *-source packages from other packages I
> maintain because DKMS seems to have all the same functionality.  (Build
> for custom kernels, build Debian packages if you want, etc.)  Am I missing
> things that DKMS is not capable of?

I guess the old arguments pro and cons for both are still mostly valid:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2011/02/msg00411.html
Message-id: <4D58595A.3030201 at debian.org>

For me personally, its mostly that I can't easily share the modules with
people who I can't let modules install by themselves (dkms kills the module
 in each kernel version on upgrade of the module by design in the hope that
 the new version of the module will build as well. Thats rather misfortune
 if the module is needed for proper X or WLAN as you suddenly have no
 working configuration anymore if build fails)

Beside, with my APT hat on it feels of course cleaner to have APT/dpkg in
control of which modules are installed rather than a "module manager" –
even if this manager was created by a big company and used by many distros.
(strawman: If that would be an argument, we should all be using rpm by now)

m-a could really be better integrated, but most of it is available for a
long time, just not by default (m-a cronjob, dmakms) …


Best regards

David Kalnischkies