[ubuntu-x] RFC: Naming scheme for -nvidia

[Alberto Milone]

On Tuesday 30 Jun 2009 06:39:18 Bryce Harrington wrote:
> I guess Nvidia will be upping the version number at least once a Ubuntu
> release, perhaps more, and I'm concerned this causes more work for us
> than it should.  The bug transitioning is also rather disruptive to
> users, and a lot didn't follow directions quite right.  In theory the
> transition would have let us drop a lot of old bugs, but in reality we
> ended up with just as many bugs filed against -180, if not more, but
> just without the comment history.  It felt like a lot of effort for
> little benefit.
>
> Now we've transitioned from 180 to 185.  I actually left the source
> package name still as nvidia-graphics-drivers-180 this time, but I don't
> really think this is a feasible solution either, as it's causing
> confusion among users.
>
> So, I'd like to propose we modify the naming scheme for nvidia drivers.
> Legacy drivers would be named the same as before,
> nvidia-graphics-drivers-96 and nvidia-graphics-drivers-173.  But the
> active driver should be named something static, like
> nvidia-graphics-drivers-new or whatever (I'm open to better names).
>
> How do you guys feel about this approach?
>
> Bryce

I see your point and I'm not against the idea. If we decide to implement it, I 
think there will be some things to deal with though:

1) Changes to nvidia (not only in the latest driver):
* postinst, etc. scripts (let's not forget the diversions mess)
* the way we generate the modalias file

2) Changes to Jockey:
* the way it gets the driver version (by parsing the modalias file) will have 
to be different for the nvidia-latest (or whatever we decide to call it) 
package.

NOTE: I can deal with this if you want.

Regards,

-- 
Alberto Milone
Sustaining Engineer (system)
Foundations Team
Canonical OEM Services