Gentoo Archives: gentoo-portage-dev

From: Amit Dor-Shifer <amitds@××××××.com>
To: gentoo-portage-dev@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-portage-dev] Re: does emerge verify arch compatibility when merging a binary package?
Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 08:56:17
Message-Id: 49EEDBAE.1090903@oversi.com
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-portage-dev] Re: does emerge verify arch compatibility when merging a binary package? by Zac Medico
1 Following suggestion, I've written a paragraph about the xpak payload. I
2 think it helps clear things. I think it can be added to the portage(5)
3 manpage, but would be happy to hear other suggestions.
4 <BEGIN>
5 Binary packages
6 A binary package is an image of a pre-built installation. The merging
7 process of such a package skipps building from source on the target
8 host. Portage supports the creation and installation of binary packages.
9 See emerge(1) for more information.
10
11 A binary package is stored as a .tbz file. Format consists of a bzip2
12 archive of the installation, with an extra chunk of data appended at the
13 end. This extra binary data is called the 'xpak' archive (add: origin of
14 name). It is a binary dump of the package's database entry (under
15 /var/db/pkg). When a binary package is installed, the xpak payload is
16 used to generate the entry in the package database. It is also used by
17 emerge in the installation process (e.g. verifying arch compatibility).
18 For more information about the format of the xpak archive, see xpak(5).
19
20 Extracting the xpak archive from the .tbz file can be achieved with
21 qtbz2. Reading the xpak archive can be done using qxpak. See qtbz2(1)
22 and qxpak(1) for more info.
23 <END>
24 Comments, please.
25 Amit
26
27 Zac Medico wrote:
28 > Amit Dor-Shifer wrote:
29 > > I don't think I would have realized this implementation myself. Is this
30 > > xpak piggybacking documented somewhere?Can you refer me?
31 > > BTW:
32 > > amit0 Installation # man xpak
33 > > No manual entry for xpak
34 > > amit0 Installation # man 5 xpak
35 > > No entry for xpak in section 5 of the manual
36 > > amit0 Installation # eix -S xpak
37 > > No matches found.
38 >
39 > The xpak.5 man page is included with >=portage-2.1.6.11. Here's a copy:
40 >
41 > http://dev.gentoo.org/~zmedico/portage/doc/man/xpak.5.html
42 >
43 > Zac

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