From owner-freebsd-libh Fri Nov 3 6:35:16 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-libh@freebsd.org Received: from weirdo.netcraft.com (weirdo.netcraft.com [195.188.192.47]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 412CC37B4C5 for ; Fri, 3 Nov 2000 06:35:13 -0800 (PST) Received: (from sketchy@localhost) by weirdo.netcraft.com (8.11.1/8.11.1) id eA3EZ3Y94463 for libh@freebsd.org; Fri, 3 Nov 2000 14:35:03 GMT (envelope-from sketchy) Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2000 14:35:03 +0000 From: Jonathan Perkin To: libh@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Making the Packages System Better Message-ID: <20001103143503.B94079@netcraft.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i X-Operating-System: FreeBSD/i386 4.1.1-STABLE Sender: owner-freebsd-libh@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Talking about symlinks and stuff [snip] Just to say this has already been done, and I know quite a few people who use it on their linux systems. http://encap.cso.uiuc.edu/ Known as the encap package manager, it uses a userland tool "epkg" to manage the symlinks etc. Quite nifty, but I side with DES in that the symlinks get annoying after a while - basic stuff like viewing file permissions is impractical as you have to follow symlinks first just to get to the file. Debian's /etc/alternatives system is even worse: $ ls -l /usr/bin/vi lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 Sep 27 10:32 /usr/bin/vi -> /etc/alternatives/vi $ ls -l /etc/alternatives/vi rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 Sep 29 17:06 /etc/alternatives/vi -> /usr/bin/nvi $ ls -l /usr/bin/nvi -rwxr-xr-x 3 root root 315248 Mar 26 2000 /usr/bin/nvi 3 commands just to get basic file perms? I can see a *lot* of people hating that very quickly. -- Jonathan Perkin Voice: +44 (01225) 404422 ech`echo xiun | tr nu oc | sed 'sx\([sx]\)\([xoi]\)xo un\2\1 is xg'`ol System Administrator - Netcraft, Bath, UK - http://www.netcraft.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-libh" in the body of the message