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To: erb@inss1.etec.uni-karlsruhe.de
cc: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: FreeBSD pkg system vs Debian dpkg 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 24 Oct 1996 04:11:09 +0200."
             <199610240211.EAA17207@insl2.etec.uni-karlsruhe.de> 
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1996 21:16:07 -0700
Message-ID: <11834.846130567@time.cdrom.com>
From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
Sender: owner-ports@freebsd.org
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
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> - ports dependencies are a little simple- there's a check if needed libs
>   (e.g. tcl/tk/perl etc.) are installed, if not, they're installed, too.
>   But pkg_add isn't checking if an older version of the to-be-installed 
>   package exists. You're ending up with many different pkg entries if you
>   don't take care about this.

You should get back to the poster and suggest that he update his package
sets and tools - this was fixed with an MD5 checksum method about a
month ago.

>   There should be really a check if the old version should be 
>   replaced/removed, maybe a message about leftover files or so..

Exactly. ;-)

> - another -imho- really important thing is a check if files to be installed
>   do already exist (or if owned by another package). I nuked mtools with 
>   installing pine (/usr/local/bin/mtest which is a symlink to mtools, so
>   mtools was overwritten and is now pines' mtest program ;).

That's a good point.

> I hope this wasn't too boring, just some thoughts that could help to
> improve the ports collection to withstand the Linux crowd ;-)

We have a pretty good design put together for a ports/packages combo
which addresses *all* of these problems, it's just finding the time to
write it. ;-) I've pledged to release "package install MkII" sometime
before spring of '97 is over, and maybe I'll even make the deadline
for once.  I'm actually putting myself into an area of the country so
rural that programmers either code or go mad. ;-)

I, of course, plan to do both.

					Jordan