Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2000 13:00:04 +0900 From: "Daniel C. Sobral" <dcs@newsguy.com> To: kientzle@acm.org Cc: Alexander Langer <alex@big.endian.de>, libh@FreeBSD.ORG, "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: BOF at BSDCon: FreeBSD Installer, Packages System Message-ID: <39FCF244.5A8C8E59@newsguy.com> References: <39DCC860.B04F7D50@acm.org> <20001006155542.A29218@cichlids.cichlids.com> <39F3CDD7.15B889E7@acm.org> <20001023190412.B507@cichlids.cichlids.com> <39F47E98.4BB647AA@acm.org> <20001023202244.B10374@cichlids.cichlids.com> <39F48F4A.38D458C2@acm.org>
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Tim Kientzle wrote: > > * ZIP access? Have you written your own, or just incorporated > pre-written libraries? The official ZIP specification puts > all of the archive directory information at the _end_ of the > archive; which is not particularly compatible with streaming. > (In particular, you can't easily get a list of all files from > a streamed archive without simply going through the entire archive; > in this respect, ZIP is not an improvement over tar.gz.) Heh. I also thought the ZIP thing wasn't very well thought out. I wonder what other formats we could use... ARJ? RAR? LHA? > A better approach, in my opinion, is to stick with tar.gz, but > with a slight twist: put the manifest/package definition information > first (possibly just a free-form text file and/or install script?) > followed by the tar.gz data. That gives you the package/distribution What this does NOT allow is search a specific point in the archive, and start reading from there. Granted, this kind of use sucks with streams, but I gather it is wanted. > * Consolidating package/distribution formats needs to be done > carefully. In particular, there are different security issues: > e.g., packages should generally be prohibited from dropping bits > into /bin or /etc. Non-sense. Packages should do what they are told, period. Do not "forbid" anything. Besides, all paths in a package MUST be relative to the base directory. I might want it installed on /usr/local, /opt, or even /. Thus, distribution formats need not be any different from package format. > * An idea that gets floated around periodically, but never apparently > taken seriously: packages should install into private directories. > /usr/local is becoming a real tarpit. Instead, package foo-3.4 should > be contained _entirely_ (with few exceptions) in > /usr/packages/foo-3.4/ Err... no. This is a worse nightmare. Ok, you might disagree. You have the option of changing the base path of the port to be installed. Write a shell script that makes the install path get it's name from the port. -- Daniel C. Sobral (8-DCS) dcs@newsguy.com dcs@freebsd.org capo@world.wide.bsdconspiracy.net He has been convicted of criminal possession of a clue with intent to distribute. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-libh" in the body of the message
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