bin/77082: src/usr.sbin/pkg_install - Add 3 new macros to clean pkg-plist

[Brooks Davis]

On Fri, Feb 04, 2005 at 07:41:29PM +0100, Florent Thoumie wrote:
> Brooks Davis wrote:
> 
> >It seems like dirrmtry should take an optional message to emit if the
> >event that the directory can not be delete.  That way the user can be
> >informed that the directory should be removed if they are really done
> >using the port.
> 
> 	I asked myself if I should put this feature in my patch and
> 	I finally haven't because it required some extra-stuff
> 	(handling optional arguments for @ commands is painful), and a
> 	simple '@unexec [ -d ${PREFIX}/etc ] && echo ...' is easier I
> 	guess. But that's no problem for me to include that if everybody
> 	thinks it worth it.

Given this workaround, it's probably not a high priority to add this.
Hmm, what about a seperate @echoifexists or similar command?

> >Have you thought about how to solve the boot strapping problems with
> >pkg_install/pkg_delete?
> 
> 	I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, I started
> 	looking at pkg_install source yesterday at night. Could you
> 	give me some pointers about that ?

The issue is that you need to find a way to keep users from installing
packages they can't uninstall.  If you add new commands and they are
used in ports, users with older systems won't have the necessicary
pkg_delete commands to make them work.  The current system doens't even
give a graceful way of detecting this condition both in the port and
when the users installs a pkg from the -stable collections online.
Longer term, we need some versioning in the plist and ports, but first
we've got to solve the problem we're stuck with now.

> >Our nominal pkg_install maintainer is MIA at the moment.
> 
> 	Ok, actually I knew eik has been working on it, but I didn't
> 	know who was the active maintainer now.

Last I heard, eik was the one working it, but no one has heard from him
in a while.  He's been gone long enough that someone else could
certaintly commit to pkg_install given public review.

> 	I have thought of a new purge command, that would act like
> 	dpkg --purge on Debian but AFAIK that would be impossible
> 	since it would need persistent package records (that still
> 	exists after a package has been removed as long as we have
> 	some configuration files for this port in the tree).

This would be a really cool feature.  Off hand, you'd probably want to
create another dirctory under /var/db to store these records.  That
would certaintly be allowed to support such a feature.

-- Brooks