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  • Bug#1079458: esptool: Add Appstream metainfo announcing HW support

    From Petter Reinholdtsen@21:1/5 to All on Thu Mar 6 12:30:03 2025
    Is the esptool package still being maintained? I notice no upload for
    many years and a new upstream available, and no response in this
    ticket to my questions.

    Note, upstream did not want to maintain the list of supported hardware
    and believe it is better fixed on the Debian side, see forwarded
    github issue. If the Debian maintainer do not want to maintain this
    list either, I see no point in pushing the issue any further.

    --
    Happy hacking
    Petter Reinholdtsen

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  • From Chris Hofstaedtler@21:1/5 to Petter Reinholdtsen on Thu Mar 6 12:50:02 2025
    On Thu, Mar 06, 2025 at 12:23:31PM +0100, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
    Is the esptool package still being maintained? I notice no upload for
    many years and a new upstream available,

    There was an upload by Faidon in 2024, adding to CC:.

    and no response in this ticket to my questions.

    Note, upstream did not want to maintain the list of supported hardware
    and believe it is better fixed on the Debian side, see forwarded
    github issue.

    Generally speaking, it would seem to me that upstreams are more
    suited to maintain such lists than downstreams...

    Best,
    Chris

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  • From Petter Reinholdtsen@21:1/5 to All on Thu Mar 6 13:00:01 2025
    [Chris Hofstaedtler]
    Generally speaking, it would seem to me that upstreams are more
    suited to maintain such lists than downstreams...

    I agree. Feel free to chip in on github if you believe it will help.

    In the mean time, my priority is improving Debian with better hardware
    to package mappings. 135 packages already announce their supported
    hardware using AppStream. I hope we can make it to 136 with this
    package. :)

    --
    Happy hacking
    Petter Reinholdtsen

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  • From Faidon Liambotis@21:1/5 to Chris Hofstaedtler on Thu Mar 6 13:50:01 2025
    On Thu, Mar 06, 2025 at 12:41:49PM +0100, Chris Hofstaedtler wrote:
    On Thu, Mar 06, 2025 at 12:23:31PM +0100, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
    Is the esptool package still being maintained? I notice no upload for
    many years and a new upstream available,

    There was an upload by Faidon in 2024, adding to CC:.

    Yeah I made three major uploads in 2023-2024, but I very explicitly made
    them as -0.1 NMUs: I wanted to see a few things happen, but I did not
    want to commit on maintaining this in the longer-term. So while I've
    been subscribed to the PTS and had seen this bug when it was first
    posted, I refrained from commenting on it since I am not nor want to be
    the maintainer. Sorry :)

    I do have the bandwidth for maybe another upload if necessary, but I
    agree that this package needs a bit more "permanent" love, perhaps under
    the auspices of a team like the Electronics team.

    (To be clear, I had an ongoing off-list thread with Milan when I made
    these uploads who was gracious enough to both welcome these uploads and
    to invite me to be a comaintainer.)

    With that out of the day, my 2¢ with regards to this bug:

    I know very little about AppStream, but this proposal doesn't make sense
    to me. cdc_acm is just a driver for modems and serial devices and the
    likes. Some ESP32 devices support this interface; for these devices,
    cdc_acm creates /dev/ttyACM nodes, that esptool then uses as a transport
    for communicating/flashing these devices using a bespoke protocol.

    esptool targets only a set of very specific devices, which represent a
    tiny fraction of all the possible cdc_acm devices out there. If this
    AppStream inclusion means that esptool will be recommended to every CDC
    ACM device, then I think that would be very confusing to users and
    generally not the right thing to do.

    Regards,
    Faidon

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  • From Petter Reinholdtsen@21:1/5 to All on Thu Mar 6 14:10:01 2025
    [Faidon Liambotis]
    I know very little about AppStream, but this proposal doesn't make sense
    to me.

    Perhaps
    <URL: http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/121_packages_in_Debian_mapped_to_hardware_for_automatic_recommendation.html >
    explain a bit how the AppStream hardware information work.

    The initial patch was based on udev rules, which in my experience
    generally is a good indicator of hardware specific packages that should announce their supported hardware using AppStream. I do not know
    esptool enough to say what make sense or not in this specific case.

    --
    Happy hacking
    Petter Reinholdtsen

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Chris Hofstaedtler@21:1/5 to Petter Reinholdtsen on Thu Mar 6 14:30:01 2025
    On Thu, Mar 06, 2025 at 02:03:10PM +0100, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
    [Faidon Liambotis]
    I know very little about AppStream, but this proposal doesn't make sense
    to me.

    Perhaps
    <URL: http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/121_packages_in_Debian_mapped_to_hardware_for_automatic_recommendation.html >
    explain a bit how the AppStream hardware information work.

    The initial patch was based on udev rules, which in my experience
    generally is a good indicator of hardware specific packages that should announce their supported hardware using AppStream. I do not know
    esptool enough to say what make sense or not in this specific case.

    ++ <modalias>usb:v0421p0001d*ic02isc02ipFFin*</modalias>
    ++ <modalias>usb:v0421p0007d*ic02isc02ipFFin*</modalias>
    ++ <modalias>usb:v0421p000Ed*ic02isc02ipFFin*</modalias>
    ++ <modalias>usb:v0421p002Fd*ic02isc02ipFFin*</modalias>
    ...

    these are USB IDs of Nokia phones. Clearly offering esptool for them
    makes zero sense. Wherever the data came from, taking it as the
    truth seems like a bad plan.

    Chris

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Petter Reinholdtsen@21:1/5 to All on Thu Mar 6 15:00:01 2025
    [Chris Hofstaedtler]
    these are USB IDs of Nokia phones. Clearly offering esptool for them
    makes zero sense. Wherever the data came from, taking it as the
    truth seems like a bad plan.

    It is based on debian/esptool.udev listing kernel modules usb-serial and cdc_acm, and 'modinfo cdc_acm' listing these modalias entries.

    --
    Happy hacking
    Petter Reinholdtsen

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