From owner-freebsd-ports Sat Jul 18 07:16:47 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id HAA24264 for freebsd-ports-outgoing; Sat, 18 Jul 1998 07:16:47 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from phoenix.welearn.com.au (suebla.lnk.telstra.net [139.130.44.81]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id HAA24259 for ; Sat, 18 Jul 1998 07:16:43 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from sue@phoenix.welearn.com.au) Received: (from sue@localhost) by phoenix.welearn.com.au (8.8.5/8.8.5) id AAA17212; Sun, 19 Jul 1998 00:16:13 +1000 (EST) Message-ID: <19980719001610.45098@welearn.com.au> Date: Sun, 19 Jul 1998 00:16:10 +1000 From: Sue Blake To: Chuck Robey Cc: freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: questions about packages References: <19980718171423.58388@welearn.com.au> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.88e In-Reply-To: ; from Chuck Robey on Sat, Jul 18, 1998 at 05:15:21AM -0400 Sender: owner-freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Sat, Jul 18, 1998 at 05:15:21AM -0400, Chuck Robey wrote: > On Sat, 18 Jul 1998, Sue Blake wrote: > > > I'm trying to fathom how packages work and there's a few things I can't > > find in the documentation, or can't recognise if they're there. > > Since this is in reference to a package for totally clueless newbies > > I have no control over installation except from within the package itself. > > > > Here's the two questions I posted to -questions yesterday with little > > result. An obvious third question is: How should one go about finding > > out this kind of info? > > > > > > Where does a package look to find the other packages it needs > > that are not yet installed? > > > > How does it distinguish between another package that should be > > installed if available, and a package that must be installed > > before this one will install? > > Packages will check dependencies, but won't automatically go out, fetch, > and install them. They'll just report missing pieces to the screen as a > reasonably readable error message, and abort the package installation. O...K... but consider kde-3.1b.tgz whose sole purpose in life is to pull in a number of other packages until the whole of KDE is installed. I know it works. I don't know where it expects to find those other packages. If they are not in that place, I don't know where else it looks. If it can't find the other packages in any of those places, I'm not 100% sure whether it would install what it can with complaints, or refuse to install anything. I need to be damn sure of this. I'm not sure whether or not I can control these two behaviours from the package. But I do know that it works. > Probably most people using packages are doing it from the cdrom, so that > just means doing an additional pkg_add with the name reported from the > initial pkg_add, then repeating the initial pkg_add. If my package needs to be on the cdrom to work brainlessly, then I have to decide quickly whether to finish it within hours or wait until October. If my package does not need to be on the cdrom to work, ie, if it is extremely simple for a windoze-oriented unix-ignorant person to download it and have it find the packages on the cdrom, then I can use less extreme time frames. But to do so would be excluding those people for whom this was designed. I'm looking here at people who have installed, typed DIR at the login: prompt, and wonder what to do next. If they have already learned enough to set up ppp then half of the package (as it stands) would be wasted on them. > It's the _ports_ that automatically fetch, build, and install > dependencies. Sure. I would hope that a package wouldn't try to fetch (these people will not have ppp up yet) but I have witnessed packages installing dependencies. I could make it a port in order to make it fetch, but that would change the target group of users and therefore nature of the information it needs to deliver. > Both ports and packages install a directory in /usr/db/pkg with the name > of the application, and that directory has the information needed later > to do an uninstall. One can always (if you want) use pkg_info to > pre-check for dependencies. Pkg_info won't install anything, so it's > safe to use. Well, I'm creating, not installing, and the people who will be installing won't be investigating those things. They'll be taking ten minutes to find the right keys to type in 'pkg_add filename' correctly, and have neither the knowledge nor enthusiasm to investigate further. *After* the package is installed they will have the means to *begin* to learn these things. Meanwhile, I have to make sure I know damn well how that package works in order to give them some chance of success with no prior knowledge and the minimum of keystrokes. -- Regards, -*Sue*- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-ports" in the body of the message