Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2002 01:55:37 +0100 (BST) From: Mark Valentine <mark@thuvia.demon.co.uk> To: wes@softweyr.com (Wes Peters), Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> Cc: 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: <200207120055.g6C0tbpQ084565@dotar.thuvia.org> In-Reply-To: Wes Peters's message of Jul 11, 10:33pm
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> 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 <mark@thuvia.co.uk> <http://www.thuvia.co.uk>; "Tigers will do ANYTHING for a tuna fish sandwich." Mark Valentine uses "We're kind of stupid that way." *munch* *munch* and endorses FreeBSD -- <http://www.calvinandhobbes.com>; <http://www.freebsd.org>; To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message
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