Forgive me if this is something trivial or otherwise already well known, but all I ever wanted in LFS package management is something that watched the installation from source and recorded what files were installed and where for purposes of later *deinstallation*.
The idea here being that all installation/upgrades would be done from source - true to LFS - but, a simple application could be called to deinstall/yank already installed packages either because they are no longer needed or prior to an upgrade where the older version (e.g., libraries) is not wanted (e.g., if something else breaks on the new library without the old that would get upgraded too). It would also be really great if there was some sort of "write sandbox" where "make install" would be able to read from the root filesystem as normal, but any writes would go to a "sandbox" "empty mirror" filesystem so that all the installed files could either be packaged or copied/installed after human "inspection and approval" (e.g., see what it has written/altered before it is allowed to do so). This would also be a safeguard against a malicious installer. Thus, final installation could be done via a simple "cp -a" (of course, a simple copy could not handle any "post" additions/alterations of files). It would be nice to be able to see a list of things that depend on a given application/library, but this is optional. And as James said, such things should be done with self-contained databases, or even better, just plain text files organized using the filesystem. FWIW, IMHO, the RPM package manager started out as a good concept, but then became so bloated as to be a sick joke with regard to dependencies. The RPM package manager is often the first thing to break during upgrades and the last to be restored. It is too fragile with regard to what it depends on to be able to rely on it when your system is in trouble. Blah! Cheers, Mike Shell -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/blfs-support FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/faq.html Unsubscribe: See the above information page
