From owner-freebsd-arch Thu Jul 11 17:56:33 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 9233137B411; Thu, 11 Jul 2002 17:56:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from thuvia.demon.co.uk (thuvia.demon.co.uk [193.237.34.248]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7FFF643E42; Thu, 11 Jul 2002 17:56:09 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mark@thuvia.demon.co.uk) Received: from dotar.thuvia.org (dotar.thuvia.org [10.0.0.4]) by phaidor.thuvia.org (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id g6C0tdb32184; Fri, 12 Jul 2002 01:55:39 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from mark@thuvia.demon.co.uk) Received: from dotar.thuvia.org (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by dotar.thuvia.org (8.12.3/8.12.3) with ESMTP id g6C0tcKC084566; Fri, 12 Jul 2002 01:55:38 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from mark@dotar.thuvia.org) Received: (from mark@localhost) by dotar.thuvia.org (8.12.3/8.12.3/Submit) id g6C0tbpQ084565; Fri, 12 Jul 2002 01:55:37 +0100 (BST) Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2002 01:55:37 +0100 (BST) From: Mark Valentine Message-Id: <200207120055.g6C0tbpQ084565@dotar.thuvia.org> In-Reply-To: Wes Peters's message of Jul 11, 10:33pm X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.2.6 beta(5) 10/07/98) To: wes@softweyr.com (Wes Peters), Terry Lambert Subject: Re: Package system flaws? Cc: Jordan K Hubbard , Dan Nelson , Archie Cobbs , Dan Moschuk , Dag-Erling Smorgrav , arch@freebsd.org 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 > From: wes@softweyr.com (Wes Peters) > Date: Thu 11 Jul, 2002 > Subject: Re: Package system flaws? > On problem in particular comes from changing the PREFIX of a > package. You can easily do this in the package tools, but how do you > change the BINARIES to realize they've been installed under another > PREFIX? How about providing a packaging API call (and utility) for the packages to grab their install root from a record in /var/db/pkg? Something like pkg_getroot(3) and pkg_config(1). There probably isn't much less intrusive way to make a package's root configurable at install time. If you didn't want the package to have to look in /var/db/pkg, have the package binaries hold a maximum-length padded string variable (marked similarly to what(1) strings), and provide a tool to edit the binary (and scripts) at install time. I think environment variables are too fragile for this purpose. > You could almost do this on UNIX now, by putting such settings into > init's environment, if you could get the application developers to > write their code (especially libraries) appropriately. This doesn't sound like it would be easy to allow different packages to be installed with different roots. Cheers, Mark. -- Mark Valentine, Thuvia Labs "Tigers will do ANYTHING for a tuna fish sandwich." Mark Valentine uses "We're kind of stupid that way." *munch* *munch* and endorses FreeBSD -- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message