From owner-freebsd-libh Fri Jun 22 2: 4:53 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-libh@freebsd.org Received: from mailgate.originative.co.uk (mailgate.originative.co.uk [62.232.68.68]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2A98637B40C; Fri, 22 Jun 2001 02:04:49 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from paul@freebsd-services.co.uk) Received: from lobster.originative.co.uk (lobster [62.232.68.81]) by mailgate.originative.co.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id 357271D13D; Fri, 22 Jun 2001 10:04:42 +0100 (BST) Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2001 10:09:39 +0100 From: Paul Richards To: Alexander Langer Cc: Jordan Hubbard , Antoine.Beaupre@ericsson.ca, Antoine.Beaupre@lmc.ericsson.se, jhb@FreeBSD.ORG, richy@apple.com, libh@FreeBSD.ORG, will@physics.purdue.edu Subject: Re: packagetool.tcl Message-ID: <253340000.993200979@lobster.originative.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <20010621203922.C2091@zerogravity.kawo2.rwth-aachen.d> X-Mailer: Mulberry/2.0.8 (Linux/x86 Demo) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Sender: owner-freebsd-libh@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG --On Thursday, June 21, 2001 20:39:22 +0200 Alexander Langer wrote: > Thus spake Paul Richards (paul@freebsd-services.co.uk): > >> What's been stuck in my mind the last few days was Alex saying that the >> libh package format was "intelligent" and used embedded tcl inside the >> packages to do things. > > Actually, you need a binary of the libh TCL interpreter. > OTOH, you also need a binary of cvsup to follow src, I think it's > quite similar. I don't think there's too much wrong with the pkg management tools becoming ports as long as there's a way to bootstrap installing the pkg management tools :-) So the comparison to cvsup is an appropriate one but it's not quite the point that worried me. >> That would mean that the package format itself required tcl to work at >> all and therefore writing a pkg management tool in another language >> would be impossible. > > What is your definition of a pkg management tool? A tool that can take a package and install it into the system, adhering to any requirements of the pkg mechanism. So for our existing pkg system, tar wouldn't count as a package tool since although it can unpack the tgz it doesn't adhere to the requirement of the package system and do the db entries and so on. However, there's nothing to stop someone writing alternatives to pkg_add et al because the package format itself is just a set of instructions to perform actions and any package tool that implemented the pkg spec could be used to install and uninstall packages, allowing someone to come along and write one in perl/python/php whatever. Maybe I miss understood your explanation but I got the impression that a package would have embedded tcl code in it to perform certain tasks, so it would not be impossible to write a pkg_add in Perl because Perl wouldn't be able to run the bits of embedded tcl in the package, at least not without calling tcl and the end result is still the same, the packages won't be any use without a tcl interpreter. Paul. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-libh" in the body of the message