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

[Florent Thoumie]

The following reply was made to PR bin/77082; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Florent Thoumie <flz at xbsd.org>
To: Brooks Davis <brooks at one-eyed-alien.net>
Cc: FreeBSD-gnats-submit at freebsd.org, freebsd-bugs at freebsd.org,
	hq at freebsd.org
Subject: Re: bin/77082: src/usr.sbin/pkg_install - Add 3 new macros to clean
 pkg-plist
Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2005 20:13:06 +0100

 Brooks Davis wrote:
 > 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?
 
 	I have nothing against that. The command above sounded really
 	simple to me that it wouldn't need a separate @ command. But
 	why not.
 
 >>>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.
 
 	Ok, what you meant is now clearer to me. I have no good idea of
 	how this exactly works but IIRC i've seen sysutils/pkg_install
 	whose job must be to "solve" this problem. I think we have kind
 	of version, with packing list format version. I need to dig into
 	this. I've only seen a little part of pkg_install actually.
 
 >>>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.
 
 	I just wanted to add @conf feature because ports lacks some
 	guidelines concerning how to handle configuration, where to
 	put sample, and I needed that support in pkg_install before
 	I can write my patch for bsd.port.mk.
 
 	I'm quite interested in pkg_install, I think there could be
 	a lot of interesting things to add. I'll probably try to add
 	such a purge command later.
 
 -- 
 Florent Thoumie
 flz at xbsd.org