Upcoming conflict with firmware-brcm80211 20230210-2

Hello Arnaud, hope you're doing well!

In Kali Linux we build a mobile image based on Mobian build scripts. The build started to fail these last days:

pinephonepro-support : Depends: firmware-brcm80211 but it is not going to be installed
                       Depends: firmware-pinephonepro-wlan but it is not going to be installed
Unpacking firmware-brcm80211 (20230210-2+kali1) ...
dpkg: error processing archive /tmp/apt-dpkg-install-wewKYQ/0-firmware-brcm80211_20230210-2+kali1_all.deb (--unpack):
 trying to overwrite '/lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43455-sdio.pine64,pinephone-pro.txt', which is also in package firmware-pinephonepro-wlan 20230213

Upon inspection, I noticed that this is due to package firmware-brcm80211 version 20230210-2. This package didn't hit bookworm yet, so it didn't break Mobian builds. However we have it in Kali already, that's why it breaks our builds.

The issue is that the latest version of firmware-brcm80211 now ships the file /lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43455-sdio.pine64,pinephone-pro.txt, and this file is also provided by Mobian's package firmware-pinephonepro-wlan. Here are the two relevant commits in firmware-nonfree:

• kernel-team/firmware-nonfree@4bb9832d
• kernel-team/firmware-nonfree@326617ad

From what I can see, the files provided by firmware-brcm80211 and firmware-pinephonepro-wlan are not identical:

$ ls -1
firmware-brcm80211_20230210-2
firmware-brcm80211_20230210-2_all.deb
firmware-pinephonepro-wlan_20230213
firmware-pinephonepro-wlan_20230213_all.deb

$ find -name brcmfmac43455-sdio.pine64,pinephone-pro.txt
./firmware-pinephonepro-wlan_20230213/lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43455-sdio.pine64,pinephone-pro.txt
./firmware-brcm80211_20230210-2/lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43455-sdio.pine64,pinephone-pro.txt

$ sha1sum firmware-pinephonepro-wlan_20230213/lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43455-sdio.pine64,pinephone-pro.txt
67603423b766304e9f66c48705d7f91775f97a72  firmware-pinephonepro-wlan_20230213/lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43455-sdio.pine64,pinephone-pro.txt

$ sha1sum firmware-brcm80211_20230210-2/lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43455-sdio.pine64,pinephone-pro.txt
1caf7eac706bd6fdec45932a3841ba4898024e84  firmware-brcm80211_20230210-2/lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43455-sdio.pine64,pinephone-pro.txt

Maybe the file provided by firmware-brcm80211 is simply more up-to-date?

From what I can see also, the package firmware-pinephonepro-wlan provides only this file. So at a quick glance, maybe it's just about removing this package. In any case, something needs to be done, as pinephonepro-support Depends on both firmware-brcm80211 and firmware-pinephonepro-wlan.

Best