[Pkg-pciutils-discuss] packages using pci.ids

[Matt Taggart]

In #328318, Cristian Ionescu-Idbohrn proposes that the packages that use the 
pci.ids PCI database find a way to use a common central copy.

If I run 'apt-file search pci.ids' on current unstable I get,

  hwdata: usr/share/hwdata/pci.ids
  lshw-common: usr/share/lshw/pci.ids
  pciutils: usr/share/misc/pci.ids

(Cristian one of the symlinks in the pciutils package went away, and I can't 
find the xviddetect one you listed. Reply with more info if you want)

I think that the copy provided by the pciutils source package and installed in 
/usr/share/misc/pci.ids should be considered the canonical system copy, since 
the pciutils package is responsible for updating this file and is the primary 
user of it.

The others packages might have a reason for having their own copies of 
pci.ids, maybe they require a snapshot of the file that can't change out from 
under them for support reasons. If not they are welcome to point at the copy 
in /usr/share/misc/pci.ids.

Maybe these other packages have included their own copy because they don't 
want to have to depend on the pciutils package? (maybe for size reasons? but 
pci.ids is 61% of the 628k package, still I guess size might still matter). 
For debian-installer the pciutils package provides a pciutils-udeb that just 
provides lspci and a stripped down version of pci.ids. Maybe this is more that 
hwdata and lshw-common need? If so we might be able to find a way to provide 
it in a way they could depend on it.

Noel and Ghe,

What do you think?

Thanks,

-- 
Matt Taggart
taggart at debian.org