From owner-freebsd-arch Tue Jul 9 7:50:10 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2A71737B401 for ; Tue, 9 Jul 2002 07:50:00 -0700 (PDT) Received: from infinitive.futureperfectcorporation.com (infinitive.futureperfectcorporation.com [196.25.137.68]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id AB4C543E52 for ; Tue, 9 Jul 2002 07:49:53 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from nbm@gerund.futureperfectcorporation.com) Received: (qmail 84994 invoked by uid 0); 9 Jul 2002 14:49:29 -0000 Received: from gerund.futureperfectcorporation.com (196.25.137.65) by infinitive.futureperfectcorporation.com with SMTP; 9 Jul 2002 14:49:29 -0000 Received: (qmail 62431 invoked by uid 1001); 9 Jul 2002 14:50:14 -0000 Date: Tue, 9 Jul 2002 16:50:14 +0200 From: Neil Blakey-Milner To: Cy Schubert - CITS Open Systems Group Cc: arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Learning from Debian (Was: Re: Package system flaws?) Message-ID: <20020709145013.GA61758@mithrandr.moria.org> References: <200207091343.g69DhOfP080432@cwsys.cwsent.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <200207091343.g69DhOfP080432@cwsys.cwsent.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.27i Organization: iTouch Labs X-Operating-System: FreeBSD 4.3-RELEASE i386 X-URL: http://mithrandr.moria.org/nbm/ Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG [ CC's trimmed - I hope nobody minds (they won't get my apology anyway if they do, I suppose) ] On Tue 2002-07-09 (06:43), Cy Schubert - CITS Open Systems Group wrote: > In message , Dag-Erling Smorgrav > writes: > > Wes Peters writes: > > > If you're sensible about the encoding, the metadata doesn't have to be > > > at the beginning of the media. > > > > Yes, it does, to allow installation from non-rewindable streams. > > IMO, this is extremely important. The Debian dpkg format uses 'ar' to put together three files - debian-binary, control.tar.gz, and data.tar.gz. debian-binary is checked so that it is known that it is at least working with a debian package. The file itself contains a version number ('2.0' from a randomly chosen one). control.tar.gz contains a few files. preinst and postinst resemble our +INSTALL files, and the same with prerm and postrm and our +DEINSTALL. conffiles contains the configuration files in the package (to protect them), and control contains most of the metadata: Package: dpkg Version: 1.10.2 Section: base Priority: required Architecture: i386 Essential: yes Pre-Depends: dselect, libc6 (>= 2.2.4-4) Conflicts: sysvinit (<< 2.82-1), dpkg-iasearch, dpkg-static, dpkg-dev (<< 1.9) Replaces: dpkg-doc-ja, dpkg-static, manpages-de (<= 0.4-3) Installed-Size: 3272 Origin: debian Maintainer: Dpkg Development Bugs: debbugs://bugs.debian.org Description: Package maintenance system for Debian data.tar.gz contains a root prefixed tar file with all the files: drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 Jul 5 05:26 2002 ./ drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 Jul 5 05:26 2002 ./usr/ drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 Jul 5 05:26 2002 ./usr/share/ drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 Jul 5 05:26 2002 ./usr/share/doc/ The debian "metadata" file used by apt and similar upgrade programs contains a summary of the "control" file for all the packages contained there, thus including all depends, conflicts, install size, and so forth, with relative versions if necessary. Are there any disadvantages with the way the Debian people have done it? And what can we learn from them? Neil -- Neil Blakey-Milner nbm@mithrandr.moria.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message