Stale pieces in the base system? (was: hardcoded -C argument to ${INSTALL})

[Garance A Drosihn]

At 9:56 PM -0400 5/6/03, The Anarcat wrote:
>I too had an obscene idea like this, but it was much more
>perverse and powerful: Why don't we make that install
>program record the files in a package? install(1) (or
>pkg_install progs) would then know which files would be
>where. By bumping a serial or version number somewhere,
>you could check which files have been changed/added/removed
>quite easily.

My fear is that any attempt to do the "perverse and powerful"
solution will open too many cans of worms, and will never
actually get done.  There have been many "obvious" solutions
posted to solve the problem of stale files, including some
grand claims that I have made from time-to-time, but the
problem turns a bit tricky when one tries to actually
implement something that will work for all freebsd users.

I wanted a solution that I thought I could implement in a week,
assuming I ever actually had a week where I was free to work
on just freebsd.  I think I could do my simple proposal in less
than a week.  Now, if this simple solution did exist, I am sure
that others could take it and greatly improve it.  But we first
have to get to *something* that actually helps the situation,
because we really do re-visit this same topic about once-a-month.

-- 
Garance Alistair Drosehn            =   gad at gilead.netel.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer           or  gad at freebsd.org
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute    or  drosih at rpi.edu