We have had this conversation before....
Philip Brown wrote:
There are some things that are purely one-shot operations unique to a particular piece of software.
But the person packaging the software is often incapable of correctly writing this one-shot operation in any context, perhaps except that of live multi-user level installation
However, for more complex software, the knowlege required, is knowlege about THE SOFTWARE in the package, more than the system the package is being installed on.
1) You cannot run any piece of software you are installing in a postinstall script. 2) You cannot count on the architecture of the machine being the same. 3) You cannot count on the filesystems being mounted in the usual manner. 4) You cannot count on the OS version being the same. 5) You cannot count on any system services being available aside from single user level basics. Scripting also raises the following problems: 1) Packages w/ scripting are unverifiable. I cannot determine whether or not a package is correctly installed, because I cannot determine the effects of the scripts being run. 2) Scripting on alternate images are inherently dangerous; the scripts may not properly translate symbolic links across images and thus any secure mechanism must use chroot or zones, which forces the image to be compatible w/ the running kernel and prevents upgrade from working w/o reboot. 3) Scripts cannot be combined, and often implicitly assume ordering across packages. IPS does not install packages in order, because to do so would make it difficult to upgrade packages that exchange files, trade directories for symlinks, etc. IPS permits circular dependencies between packages. We're _not_ supporting, allowing, permitting or condoning arbitrary install time scripting in packages. - Bart -- Bart Smaalders Solaris Kernel Performance [email protected] http://blogs.sun.com/barts "You will contribute more with mercurial than with thunderbird." _______________________________________________ pkg-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/pkg-discuss
