Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Sat, 02 Aug 1997 20:42:00 -0500
From:      dkelly@hiwaay.net
To:        ports@FreeBSD.ORG, current@FreeBSD.ORG, stable@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: ports-current/packages-current discontinued 
Message-ID:  <199708030144.UAA04956@nexgen.hiwaay.net>

next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
I trimmed the individual addresses from this reply but wonder if it really 
should be going to (3) FreeBSD lists?

Maybe its time to consider a change in a bit different direction. Is anyone 
familiar with the inst system SGI uses? Its almsost unmanagable from an 
ASCII terminal but with the graphic tool its simple enough for my boss.

Every component SGI provides is registered in their installation history. 
Some are not optional. Others are. And the inst tool knows what is required 
for what, and when a newer version is installed it knows what to delete. 
Try to install something without the prerequisites and it'll tell you 
exactly what is missing, and if its available you'll be offered the chance 
to install it too. Otherwise you may be swapping CDs until you find it.

Needless to say, this would make it very easy for someone to delete all of 
TCL or perl or whatever from a base FreeBSD system if we had it. Or to 
install it.

It would be handy for me right now as I've had some system freezes, 
possibly always in X (one time it rebooted in the middle of the night for 
no reason, one time in 2 years) and I'm about to make XFree86-3.3. Would be 
nice to be able to cleanly remove the prior version from underneath first.

Maybe in the short term utilities such as TCL, perl, and x11 should be 
registered in /var/db/pkg even if they are part of the base installation so 
they could be removed later? It means other components which require these 
items would also have to be registered as a package.

One hitch in the FreeBSD package system that SGI doesn't have is the 
concept of "upgrade". If I replace version 2.8 of something with version 
2.9, to cleanly do it now I have to remove 2.8. But if other packages 
depend on it, then I can't delete it without deleting everything that 
depends on it. Of course there is always the problem of packages that work 
with 2.8 and not 2.9... Supposedly SGI tests for this before releasing the 
new one.

--
David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly@hiwaay.net
=====================================================================
The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its
capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system.




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199708030144.UAA04956>