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Following suggestion, I've written a paragraph about the xpak payload. I |
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think it helps clear things. I think it can be added to the portage(5) |
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manpage, but would be happy to hear other suggestions. |
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<BEGIN> |
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Binary packages |
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A binary package is an image of a pre-built installation. The merging |
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process of such a package skipps building from source on the target |
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host. Portage supports the creation and installation of binary packages. |
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See emerge(1) for more information. |
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|
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A binary package is stored as a .tbz file. Format consists of a bzip2 |
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archive of the installation, with an extra chunk of data appended at the |
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end. This extra binary data is called the 'xpak' archive (add: origin of |
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name). It is a binary dump of the package's database entry (under |
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/var/db/pkg). When a binary package is installed, the xpak payload is |
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used to generate the entry in the package database. It is also used by |
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emerge in the installation process (e.g. verifying arch compatibility). |
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For more information about the format of the xpak archive, see xpak(5). |
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|
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Extracting the xpak archive from the .tbz file can be achieved with |
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qtbz2. Reading the xpak archive can be done using qxpak. See qtbz2(1) |
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and qxpak(1) for more info. |
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<END> |
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Comments, please. |
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Amit |
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|
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Zac Medico wrote: |
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> Amit Dor-Shifer wrote: |
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> > I don't think I would have realized this implementation myself. Is this |
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> > xpak piggybacking documented somewhere?Can you refer me? |
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> > BTW: |
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> > amit0 Installation # man xpak |
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> > No manual entry for xpak |
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> > amit0 Installation # man 5 xpak |
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> > No entry for xpak in section 5 of the manual |
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> > amit0 Installation # eix -S xpak |
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> > No matches found. |
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> |
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> The xpak.5 man page is included with >=portage-2.1.6.11. Here's a copy: |
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> |
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> http://dev.gentoo.org/~zmedico/portage/doc/man/xpak.5.html |
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> |
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> Zac |