Re: sub-pakage to replace a file in the main package

[David Brownlee <abs%absd.org@localhost>]

On Wed, 10 Feb 2021 at 19:52, Edgar Fuß <ef%math.uni-bonn.de@localhost> wrote:
>
> > First, file a bug with upstream.
> I'm afraid that's a waste of time.
>
> > because it is very awkward to package.
> If you want to see something that's *really* awkward to package, take a look
> at Icinga Web 2 (net/icingaweb2, there's a rant of mine in Makefile).
>
> > You might see what Debian and FC packages do.
> Debian depends on libusb.
>
> > But as I looked into this, I bet they just require usb.
> Yes.
>
> > Looking at the build files, it seems upstream has a notion of building
> > with usb support or not, and doesn't really have notion of a separate
> > install for usb drivers.  So they'd say we are doing it wrong.
> Yes.
>
> > Sizewise, libusb1/libusb-compat is only 350K
> With or without libusb1 proper?
>
> > and the USB drivers are 490K.
> They'll even grow a bit in case upstream cares about my Q*-based Masterguard
> driver.
>
> > Therefore, we could consider just requiring usb in ups-nut, and dropping
> > the ups-nut-usb package.
> We might regret that in case upstream switches to libusb9-warp-ng which
> requires udev, devfs, dbus and systemd.
>
> > That will make a few people with serial-only UPS units have to have
> > the libusb1 package installed.
> I would partly understand people arguing that a UPS is nothing you would
> like to depend on new-fangled things like USB.
>
> > Are there platforms where libusb is not going to build
> No idea.
>
> But what about my original question? Does pkgsrc provide such a thing?
> How awkward does my idea of linking files in INSTALL/DEINSTALL sound?

Maybe a slight variant - have the base package install nutdrv_qx_ser,
and the usb package install nutdrv_qx_usb, and then have a
'nutdrv-update' script as part of the base that gets called on INSTALL
and DEINSTALL of both packages. Its job is to manage the nutdrv_qx
hard/softlink, creating or removing it as appropriate.

David