On Sun, Jun 16, 2002 at 06:10:10PM +0100, Miah Gregory wrote: > In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Matt Zimmerman > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On Sun, Jun 16, 2002 at 05:32:42PM +0100, Miah Gregory wrote: > > > > I'm going to hope that you're just joking there, right?? We're talking > > > about devices with severely limited amounts of ram and storage space. > > > You don't want countless copies of licences, changelogs, and in most > > > cases, even documentation all over the place. > > > Of course you don't. But the right way to solve that problem is to > > allow dpkg to exclude these things when unpacking packages. > > Possibly.. Don't forget that such devices will also often be on the end of > low bandwidth links, so size really does mean everything.. :-)
As we have shown with the debian-installer udebs, it is not difficult to manage this within the existing Debian packaging infrastructure. For the cases where it makes enough of a difference to be justified, we can provide trimmed-down packages in the style of udebs (or perhaps use udebs themselves if appropriate). > > I confess to not knowing any more than this about the ipkg format. > > However, based on what I know, this similarity seems to be a duplication > > of effort. dpkg and existing Debian packages can, and will, be extended > > to provide equivalent functionality without sacrificing other features. > > The size of the local package database is also a concern. Will any of the > planned changes to dpkg address the size of the database, to make it more > suitable for limited resource devices? >From what I can tell by examining my Zaurus installation, ipkg addresses this in the following ways: 1. The status file is stripped down: Package: openssh Status: install ok installed Root: / Version: 1.2.3 Package: qpe-filemanager Status: install ok installed Root: / Version: 1.5.0-1 This seems reasonable; eliminating the descriptions probably saves a lot of space. 2. The info database only contains file listings: $ ls /usr/lib/ipkg/info openssh.list qpe-filemanager.list qpe-nethack.list qpe-terminal.list This must mean that no prerm/postrm scripts can be used, unless they are run from a binary package. It may mean that there are no maintainer scripts at all. I don't find that to be a very good tradeoff, personally. It would be nice if dpkg could exclude certain control files, such as md5sums and shlibs, however. Do you have any idea about the Root: stuff? It seems like it is providing for various trees to be installed in different locations, which could be quite useful. $ cat /home/etc/ipkg.conf dest root / dest tmpinst /tmp/ipkg/inst -- - mdz -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
