Duncan, now I'm getting your point and why we are discussing: You are telling me how _we_, SUSE, are using patches today. I am talking about how we evaluated our partners to possibly use patches. In the past, we've had crazy ideas how to use patches to enable different systems that need different driver versions from one single repository. For example, if you had one common repository for acme corp and their hardware, there could be an acme-cool-box and an acme-laptop, and they'd need different versions of a foofoo KMP, like this: Patch 1 Name: acme-cool-box Version: 1 # maybe the name/version works different for patches, # but conceptually this has to exist. Supplements: modalias(kernel-$FLAVOR:pci:...) Requires: foofoo-KMP = 47.11 Patch 3: Name: acme-laptop Version: 1 Supplements: modalias(kernel-$FLAVOR:pci:...) Requires: foofoo-KMP = 47.13 And if ever an update is needed later for acme-cool-box: Patch 2 Name: acme-cool-box Version: 2 Supplements: modalias(kernel-$FLAVOR:pci:...) Requires: foofoo-KMP = 47.15 nota bene: the laptop won't get the update, and this is intentional! Nobody has ever done this, as a) libzypp didn't handle it yet when we decided hwo to implement driver kits and b) we felt individual repos for the acme box easyer to maintain than the above. So nobody has ever done this, so far, and the plan is to stay with seperate repos for different products. What I'm getting from your helpfull comments is that nobody has ever intended patches to be used like this. From the discussion I'm also understanding that all kinds of weird stuff may happen if someone actually tries this, as libzypp may make assumptions that the above is never done. So thx again for your explanations, they helped to understand which route to go ;) S. -- Susanne Oberhauser +49-911-74053-574 SUSE -- a Novell Business OPS Engineering Maxfeldstraße 5 Processes and Infrastructure Nürnberg SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+help@opensuse.org