From owner-freebsd-stable Tue Apr 23 22: 8:23 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from tomts21-srv.bellnexxia.net (tomts21.bellnexxia.net [209.226.175.183]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E55BF37B41B for ; Tue, 23 Apr 2002 22:08:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: from shall.anarcat.dyndns.org ([65.94.187.200]) by tomts21-srv.bellnexxia.net (InterMail vM.5.01.04.05 201-253-122-122-105-20011231) with ESMTP id <20020424050815.BSSF6021.tomts21-srv.bellnexxia.net@shall.anarcat.dyndns.org>; Wed, 24 Apr 2002 01:08:15 -0400 Received: from lenny.anarcat.dyndns.org (lenny.anarcat.dyndns.org [192.168.0.4]) by shall.anarcat.dyndns.org (Postfix) with SMTP id BA7FA341; Wed, 24 Apr 2002 01:07:17 -0400 (EDT) Received: by lenny.anarcat.dyndns.org (sSMTP sendmail emulation); Wed, 24 Apr 2002 01:07:11 -0400 Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 01:07:11 -0400 From: The Anarcat To: Mike Meyer Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: [resend] packaging base (was: /etc/defaults/rc.conf theory) Message-ID: <20020424050711.GC973@lenny.anarcat.dyndns.org> Mail-Followup-To: Mike Meyer , freebsd-stable@freebsd.org References: <20020424030937.GC323@lenny.anarcat.dyndns.org> <15558.12150.814150.317904@guru.mired.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <15558.12150.814150.317904@guru.mired.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.27i Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Tue Apr 23, 2002 at 11:07:18PM -0500, Mike Meyer wrote: > In <20020424030937.GC323@lenny.anarcat.dyndns.org>, The Anarcat typed: > > [this thread is still alive? i'll spice it up a bit then] > > You don't need libh to package the base system. > > True, but not complete. > > > And actually, it would be a good thing if people started thinking > > about packaging the base system apart from libh. > > People *have* thought about doing that. They concluded that libh was > the correct solution. I wasn't aware of that. > If you disagree, feel free to submit pr's with patches that solve > the problem without libh. Right now, I'm working on making libh do *something*, mind you, so I'm not the one who's going to work on the extra-libh solution. Not my field. > > The main issues I see about packaging the base system is [1] how plists > > are to be handled and [2] how configurations files are to be handled. > > You missed the biggie: [3] how the base system install is handled. The same way the rest of the system is. [3] = [1] + [2] > You either have to make all the packages floppy-sized chunks, Which is impossible. > or fix the package system to deal with packages that are split up > into floppy-sized chunks. Which is moderatly feasable. Some people have already started working on a pkgAPI which would encapsulate such problems. Also, I don't think it would be very complex to cat many files into a single one on the filesystem prior to installing a package. Very simple, I think. > This has to be done using the grotty interface library currently > used to do the base system install. You're probably talking about sysinstall? Then I guess than, yes, it will be a pain to implement. But guess what: libh won't get through if it's not a drop-in replacement for sysinstall. This means sysinstall must be re-written from scratch. Which is arguably equivalent to adding split-package functionalities to the current sysinstall. But that was not my original point: > All the people I know of who know that sytem well enough to do the > job consider it more effort than it's worth. Hence, the effort to > provide a better set of tools for building the better install system > that goes under the moniker "the libh project". The libh project doesn't solve the problem of packaging the base system. It provides a new API and package format that will be more efficient and robust, along with a dual console/graphical interface, but does not deal with source management and build systems. In other words, libh doesn't know about the ports collection or /usr/src yet, and I don't think it's going to change soon. That is a different beast. Now if *you* have patches to make libh recognize split-packages, i'd happily commit them to the tree. And there'll probably be someone to commit your patches to packaging /usr/src in a pkgAPI-independant way. A. -- Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes - E. Dijkstra To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message