what next for the pkg_install rewrite

[Ivan Voras]

On 19/08/2010, Julien Laffaye <jlaffaye at freebsd.org> wrote:

> There are a lot of areas of potential discussions: packing list format,
> local database format, ...
> In my opinion, trying to be 100% compatible with the actual tools will slow
> down the project. I am thinking, for example, about the slave/master modes
> which made sense when we used a temporary directory, but less if we want to
> extract the files to their final destination via libarchive.
>
> Then, this specification will need to be approved by portmgr@ so the actual
> coding can start!

Like many people in this discussion I have done some work on pkg_* and
for what it's worth, here's what I would like changed:

- Fully specify and separate package name from its version - metadata
should not record "apache-2.2.13" but "apache", "2.2.13" to better
support upgrading and dependancies.
- Debian-like dependancies - the "suggests" variety, as well as
"ranged-dependancies" - package X depends on Y versions W through Z.
- A wrapper for all pkg_ tools to use, implemented with libarchive.
This wrapper would allow preparation of the whole archive layout
in-memory, together with simulating  common file system operations
like chmod, chown, rmdir, mkdir, rename, unlink, etc. and would as a
last step offer to serialize this virtual file system to an archive.
- Policy to forbid the lazy-maintainer dances with package names, such
as package names depending on config flags used, etc. - this probably
needs more thinking through. Essentially, I want to avoid things like
what happened to the apr port - names like
"apr-ipv6-devrandom-gdbm-db42-1.4.2.9.3.1_1"

Of course, this would better be if documented somewhere semi-permanent
- in our wiki for example.