On Sun, 31 Mar 2002, Josh  Kuperman wrote:

> On Sat, Mar 30, 2002 at 08:20:22PM +0100, Martin Costabel wrote:
> > > 
> > > Can you find & copy over the .deb files under /sw/fink/dists? I've
> > > been curious if this would work, but haven't been able to try it...
> 
> I don't have any .deb files; I think this is right because I'm set up to
> use CVS and build everything on my desktop machine. 

When building from source, one of the final steps is to pack everything
in the package into a single .deb archive, which is then unpacked by dpkg
to install it on your system. (Bundling it this way should make installing
and de-installing easier.) So even if you're building from source, you
should have a .deb file for each package you have installed. Browse your
/sw/fink directory to see how this is all laid out, but basically you'll
have parallel directories like:

  /sw/fink/dists/stable/main/finkinfo/*
  /sw/fink/dists/stable/main/binary-darwin-powerpc/*
  /sw/fink/dists/unstable/main/finkinfo/*
  /sw/fink/dists/unstable/main/binary-darwin-powerpc/*
  /sw/fink/dists/local/main/finkinfo/*
  /sw/fink/dists/local/main/binary-darwin-powerpc/*

  /sw/fink/debs <-> symlinks to items from the binary... folders above

The */finkinfo/* trees have text descriptions of packages & patches. The
*/binary-darwin-powerpc/* have parallel tree containing the deb bundles. 

So, copying over these custom-built debs -- and probably also the symlinks
and the description files from */finkinfo/* -- should be enough to "port"
packages from one OSX box to another. You can pack it all up with a

   % tar -zcvf finks.tgz /sw/fink

and then copy that finks.tgz file & unpack it on the other machine. Then
run (making an educated guess here) "fink install $package" on the other
computer to extract the $package package from the debs/infos that you just
copies over, and should get a fast, clean installation as a result.

> Since on my desktop I'm already compiling from CVS I shouldn't really
> need the debs as I have created the binaries.

....debs kinda *are* binaries....

> I don't think I can copy what's in /sw and I don't think I should need
> all of it. 

Actually, since one of the design criteria for Fink is that everything
should be strictly contained within the /sw tree, you actually do have a
pretty good chance at cleanly copying one computers /sw tree to another.
There are gotchas to look for -- X11 isn't all confined to /sw, and this
could cause problems I admit -- but the majority of packages should be
able to transfer pretty well...

> How do I get the same version of the same packages on multiple
> machines, but build only on one.
 
I still say to copy the /sw/fink tree to replicate the info and deb files
everywhere, then execute (maybe as a batch script if you want things to be
really identical everywhere) a 'fink install' command to load the packages
that you have transferred. This involves only one build; the installation
time will compare favorably with other binary installation routines you've
probably done with the Mac installer, Windows installers, etc. 


-- 
Chris Devers                                [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Apache / mod_perl / http://homepage.mac.com/chdevers/resume/

"More war soon. You know how it is."    -- mnftiu.cc


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