Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2002 00:39:25 -0700 From: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> To: Mark Valentine <mark@thuvia.demon.co.uk> Cc: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>, Jordan K Hubbard <jkh@queasyweasel.com>, Dan Nelson <dnelson@allantgroup.com>, Archie Cobbs <archie@dellroad.org>, Dan Moschuk <dan@freebsd.org>, Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@ofug.org>, arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Package system flaws? Message-ID: <3D2E87AD.76DC449D@softweyr.com> References: <200207120055.g6C0tbpQ084565@dotar.thuvia.org>
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Mark Valentine wrote:
>
> > 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).
I was thinking we could replace a lot of the mish-mash in /var/db/pkg
with a munged up version of the metadata file that includes all the
real file locations, translations for various meta directory names,
etc. Providing a simply library function to translate PREFIX for
"my package" or a named package would be ever so sensible.
> There probably isn't much less intrusive way to make a package's root
> configurable at install time.
It's a good idea, if we can just get the application developers to use it.
Actually you might be able to do it by forcing autoconf to code in a
meta-name for each the directory prefixes and linking against an overridden
version of open(2) that properly translates the meta-name. But that's
icky. And the next thing you know, somebody's gonna want that function
to allow the meta-name to be expanded to a path, etc. etc. Augh!
> 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.
Similar to the above, substituting scary editing of binaries for
scary library linking. ;^)
> 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.
You're right. VMS has a system table, a per-group table, and a per-user
table to allow overrides. They teeter between being neat features and
be overkill.
--
"Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"
Wes Peters Softweyr LLC
wes@softweyr.com http://softweyr.com/
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