Chapter 4 of the file hiearchy standard says that /usr should not be written to. The unpacking of the source into /usr in a postinst would create data that lives outside of the dpkg database, so unpacking source there automatically would be a violation of the FHS, in my opinion.
Creation of data somewhere under /var, or in a user-configurable location is an option, but not one I'm fond of. What happens if source is already unpacked there? We wouldn't want to overwrite an existing buildtree that potentially has modifications. What happens when we run out of disk space? Apt can't easily detect this ahead of time, so this will cause the upgrade to fail, or leave something partially extracted. However, you probably know what you want to happen in these cases, so I think you can accomplish it by writing an apt hook. See: http://wiki.debian.net/?AptConf You can write a Pre-Install-Pkgs hook that detects if a new kernel-source package is being installed. If so, it can trigger some action that will wait for apt to complete and then trigger an extraction to whatever location you want. Another option would be a Post-Invoke hook that compares the timestamp or md5sum of the kernel-source tarballs it finds in /usr, and if one has changed (or one has been added), perform the extraction. Does this sound reasonable? -- dann frazier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]