[gentoo-dev] Wireless driver / firmware ebuilds & wireless-tools

[Stroller]

Hi,

I thought about filing another bug about this, but decided I'd rather 
whine about it in public to get a better airing / flaming / 
understanding of the issues.

Using a wireless network card under linux may require various 
components:
- the hardware driver itself
- a firmware to be uploaded to the card via hotplug
- hotplug
- as I understand it: wireless-tools to actually configure the SSID, 
WEP key
   &c of the wireless network to be connected to.

Is my understanding of the last point incorrect?
Because it seems to me there's little point in emerging the ebuild for 
a wireless network card unless it's going to be connected to a wireless 
network, and in that case the least thing that's going to need setting 
is the SSID & IP address.

Prism54 is the name of one such driver, and because it is being 
incorporated into the main kernel tree there exists more than one 
ebuild for it - one which includes the hardware driver module itself, 
and one for one for users of the latest kernels who only require the 
firmware.

These two ebuilds take a different approach to wireless-tools - one 
requires it as a depend, the other does not:

	$ emerge -pv prism54
	
	These are the packages that I would merge, in order:
	
	Calculating dependencies ...done!
	[ebuild  N    ] sys-apps/hotplug-20040923  43 kB
	[ebuild  N    ] net-wireless/prism54-firmware-1.0.4.3  91 kB
	[ebuild  N    ] net-wireless/wireless-tools-27  +nls 0 kB
	[ebuild  N    ] net-wireless/prism54-20050125  -pcmcia 74 kB
	
	Total size of downloads: 210 kB
	$ emerge -pv prism54-firmware
	
	These are the packages that I would merge, in order:
	
	Calculating dependencies ...done!
	[ebuild  N    ] sys-apps/hotplug-20040923  43 kB
	[ebuild  N    ] net-wireless/prism54-firmware-1.0.4.3  91 kB
	
	Total size of downloads: 135 kB
	$

I filed a bug <http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=87197> about this 
a few weeks ago, and was told:
   "The firmware itself does not depend on wireless-tools for operation.
    DEPEND/RDEPEND/PDEPEND in ebuilds are not for what you might
    want to use along with the package in question - it is for technical
    dependencies such as libraries and utilities."

Now, as I say, I can see few reasons to install the prism54 firmware & 
not use wireless-tools - were you to use a Prism54 card in passive-mode 
as a packet-sniffer then I suppose it's possible, but most users want 
to `emerge prism54-firmware` and have it "Just Work (tm)".

Having been blown out on my bug I took it deeply personally, then 
shrugged & forgot about it. Forgot about it, that is, until I went to 
setup the wireless card in a freshly-installed laptop today:

	$ emerge -pv acx100
	
	These are the packages that I would merge, in order:
	
	Calculating dependencies ...done!
	[ebuild  N    ] net-wireless/wireless-tools-27  +nls 0 kB
	[ebuild  N    ] net-wireless/acx100-0.2.0_pre8-r5  -pcmcia 275 kB
	
	Total size of downloads: 275 kB
	$

It seems to me that I could now file a bug about acx100 saying that it 
"incorrectly depends upon wireless-tools" but - unless I'm 
misunderstanding something pertinent - I still think this is the wrong 
behaviour. Whether I'm installing a prism54 or an acx100 card in my 
machine, I'm still going to need to iwconfig them to the right wireless 
network.

The ebuild for the Ralink cards seems to feel the same way:

	$ emerge -pv rt2500
	
	These are the packages that I would merge, in order:
	
	Calculating dependencies ...done!
	[ebuild  N    ] net-wireless/wireless-tools-27  +nls 0 kB
	[ebuild  N    ] net-wireless/rt2500-1.1.0_beta2-r1  +qt 286 kB
	
	Total size of downloads: 286 kB
	$

So, anyway, I don't intend for this posting to be a criticism of brix 
for blowing me out on my bug, I  just want to understand better. Can 
anyone tell me if there's a logical reason for wireless-tools to be 
treated differently by these 4 packages? If you "might want to use" 
wireless-tools in almost every circumstance with the prism54-firmware & 
this isn't covered by DEPEND/RDEPEND/PDEPEND, can we have a new 
variable "YOU_MIGHT_WANT_TO_USE_DEPEND", please?

Stroller.

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