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Alec Warner wrote: |
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> On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 8:39 PM, Ravi Pinjala <ravi@××××××××.net> wrote: |
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>> One of my occasional frustrations with Gentoo is that it's more |
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>> difficult than it needs to be to install a package from a tarball, and |
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>> still have its files tracked by a package manager. The simplest thing |
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>> I've found to do is to create an ebuild in my personal overlay and use |
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>> that, but not everybody wants/needs to learn how to write ebuilds. |
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>> |
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>> My project idea is a tool to allow users to quickly install packages |
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>> from tarballs, or other sources, and have the installed files tracked by |
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>> their package manager. Ideally, it should be no more difficult than the |
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>> usual "./configure; make; make install" sequence that we're all used to. |
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> |
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> ebuild with blank src_unpack, blank src_compile, src_install that |
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> unpacks the tarball into $D |
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> |
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> config files and whatnot are difficult. |
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Well, it'd be nice to compile the package too, but point taken. :p |
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Even so, that still requires the user to know something about ebuild |
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writing, and maintain a personal overlay. People are much more likely to |
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already know how to install packages from source tarballs; it ought to |
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be possible to install a package (and have the PM be aware of it) using |
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just that knowledge. |
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> |
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>> One obvious issue with this is dependencies; if packages installed using |
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>> this method can be used as dependencies of other packages, it makes it a |
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>> lot easier for users to do strange things to their systems. My initial |
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>> instinct is to say that packages installed by this method will be |
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>> excluded from dependency calculations somehow, but I also think the |
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>> option should be there somewhere. |
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>> |
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> |
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> I don't see how its much different than using any other binary package. |
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> |
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I'm actually not sure how Gentoo binary packages work. If they're just |
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tarballs of the files a package installs, then yeah, it's very similar. |
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I'm assuming they have more information than that, though, since USE |
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deps, for example, would be useless otherwise. |
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Official binary packages also have the advantage of having been checked |
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by a developer. The situation I'm trying to avoid here is that a user |
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installs package A through this method, then installs package B which |
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depends on A, through portage. If the user has done something strange |
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with A, B could fail in interesting ways, and it would not be at all |
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obvious that A was the problem. |
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>> Questions/comments/suggestions? Is this actually a terrible idea, for |
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>> reasons I haven't thought of yet? :) |
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>> |
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>> --Ravi |
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>> |
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>> |
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> |
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> |
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