On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 8:39 PM, Ravi Pinjala <ravi@...> wrote:
> One of my occasional frustrations with Gentoo is that it's more
> difficult than it needs to be to install a package from a tarball, and
> still have its files tracked by a package manager. The simplest thing
> I've found to do is to create an ebuild in my personal overlay and use
> that, but not everybody wants/needs to learn how to write ebuilds.
>
> My project idea is a tool to allow users to quickly install packages
> from tarballs, or other sources, and have the installed files tracked by
> their package manager. Ideally, it should be no more difficult than the
> usual "./configure; make; make install" sequence that we're all used to.

ebuild with blank src_unpack, blank src_compile, src_install that
unpacks the tarball into $D

config files and whatnot are difficult.

>
> One obvious issue with this is dependencies; if packages installed using
> this method can be used as dependencies of other packages, it makes it a
> lot easier for users to do strange things to their systems. My initial
> instinct is to say that packages installed by this method will be
> excluded from dependency calculations somehow, but I also think the
> option should be there somewhere.
>

I don't see how its much different than using any other binary package.

> Questions/comments/suggestions? Is this actually a terrible idea, for
> reasons I haven't thought of yet? :)
>
> --Ravi
>
>