Re: [Fink-devel] Re: Providing default /sw/var/lib/debfoster/keepers with base-files package?
Hi, On Jan 21, 2005, at 4:01 AM, Daniel Macks wrote: On Fri, Jan 21, 2005 at 05:57:23AM -0500, Dave Vasilevsky wrote: On Jan 20, 2005, at 8:02 PM, Daniel Macks wrote: If a user is not carfull the system might end up unusable due to e.g. a missing apt while running with UseBinaryDist. That's not an "unusable" state, since fink will merely issue a "please install the apt pkg" warning. But anyway... I think what was meant was using the binary distribution (ie: exclusively apt-get, no use of fink-the-program at all). Quite a number of users don't even have the DevTools installed, but just apt-get packages via the CLI or FinkCommander. If they lose apt, they're pretty screwed. You or I might know we could go to the Fink bindist on the web, download the .deb for apt, and re-install it via dpkg; but the average user wouldn't. apt-get seems to be smart enough to know it is part of the "apt" package, and therefore treat it as "essential" in the formal (dpkg) sense. The problem is using dpkg/fink/FinkCommander to remove it. When one first installs fink, does it install the "apt" pkg? That would mean one has apt.deb. A purely binary user (i.e., no XCode) would have SelfUpdateMethod:point and Trees:stable/*, meaning the original apt.deb would still be the "correct" version (matching %v-%r in the PDB, so no compile needed to reinstall it by whatever tool he used to remove it). Would it help if fink should treated "apt" as (dpkg)Essential when running with UseBindist? Perhaps this is an argument for making apt essential? If a significant portion of the user base is stuck should apt ever be removed, it seems to be pretty "essential" in the English sense of the word. Is there a technical reason that it isn't essential? From a maintenance point of view, the fewer packages that are (dpkg)Essential set the better. It really isn't (English)essential for build-from-source purists...I'd used fink for several years and never touched it until I started looking at the UseBindist implementation. But if it really is (English)essential for a large number of users and making it (dpkg)Essential is the easiest way to accomplish that, then so be it (especially since Essential:yes is just a change to the apt pkg and can so easily be changed again in the future should we change our minds). I haven't have too much time to play around, but I figured out that debfoster needs both apt and dpkg at run time, while they were missing from the depends. I committed a fixed package in 10.3/unstable. This should at least cure the problem that debfoster removes apt. I don't know exactly how debfoster uses this keepers file, but assuming it's the "live" list of intentionally installed pkgs, gotta be very careful how to handle upgrades. The list of Essential files can change...don't want to don't want to overwrite a live datafile. This is true. I think it's better to look at debfoster's facilities. The default debfoster.conf has 'UseEssential = yes', which should stop debfoster from removing essentials. So why are we seeing them being removed? *That* is a very good question (and solving it may alter the course of the whole preceeding discussion:). Right. But I was not able to reproduce the problem. Do you have a case where debfoster ignores the 'essential' flag? Cheers, Remi - I haven't lost my mind - it's backed up on my disk somewhere. * Remigius K. Mommsen e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] University of California, Irvine URL:http://cern.ch/mommsen c/o SLAC voice:++1 (650) 926-3595 2575 Sand Hill Road #35fax:++1 (650) 926-3882 Menlo Park, CA 94025, US home:++1 (650) 233-9041 * --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IntelliVIEW -- Interactive Reporting Tool for open source databases. Create drag-&-drop reports. Save time by over 75%! Publish reports on the web. Export to DOC, XLS, RTF, etc. Download a FREE copy at http://www.intelliview.com/go/osdn_nl ___ Fink-devel mailing list Fink-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fink-devel
Re: [Fink-devel] Re: Providing default /sw/var/lib/debfoster/keepers with base-files package?
On Jan 20, 2005, at 8:02 PM, Daniel Macks wrote: If a user is not carfull the system might end up unusable due to e.g. a missing apt while running with UseBinaryDist. That's not an "unusable" state, since fink will merely issue a "please install the apt pkg" warning. But anyway... I think what was meant was using the binary distribution (ie: exclusively apt-get, no use of fink-the-program at all). Quite a number of users don't even have the DevTools installed, but just apt-get packages via the CLI or FinkCommander. If they lose apt, they're pretty screwed. You or I might know we could go to the Fink bindist on the web, download the .deb for apt, and re-install it via dpkg; but the average user wouldn't. Perhaps this is an argument for making apt essential? If a significant portion of the user base is stuck should apt ever be removed, it seems to be pretty "essential" in the English sense of the word. Is there a technical reason that it isn't essential? If debfoster uses apt, then debfoster should Depends:apt, since apt is not an Essential pkg (nor should it be IMO). That's a pretty fundamental packaging issue. The problem is not that debfoster requires apt (it technically doesn't require it, though the default configuration does). Rather, the issue is that apt is nearly-but-not-quite essential for fink, so removal is allowed even though it may be a big problem for some users. And that debfoster seems to be removing some actually essential packages, too. I don't know exactly how debfoster uses this keepers file, but assuming it's the "live" list of intentionally installed pkgs, gotta be very careful how to handle upgrades. The list of Essential files can change...don't want to don't want to overwrite a live datafile. This is true. I think it's better to look at debfoster's facilities. The default debfoster.conf has 'UseEssential = yes', which should stop debfoster from removing essentials. So why are we seeing them being removed? Dave PGP.sig Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: [Fink-devel] Re: Providing default /sw/var/lib/debfoster/keepers with base-files package?
On Jan 20, 2005, at 8:02 PM, Daniel Macks wrote: If a user is not carfull the system might end up unusable due to e.g. a missing apt while running with UseBinaryDist. That's not an "unusable" state, since fink will merely issue a "please install the apt pkg" warning. But anyway... I think what was meant was using the binary distribution (ie: exclusively apt-get, no use of fink-the-program at all). Quite a number of users don't even have the DevTools installed, but just apt-get packages via the CLI or FinkCommander. If they lose apt, they're pretty screwed. You or I might know we could go to the Fink bindist on the web, download the .deb for apt, and re-install it via dpkg; but the average user wouldn't. Perhaps this is an argument for making apt essential? If a significant portion of the user base is stuck should apt ever be removed, it seems to be pretty "essential" in the English sense of the word. Is there a technical reason that it isn't essential? If debfoster uses apt, then debfoster should Depends:apt, since apt is not an Essential pkg (nor should it be IMO). That's a pretty fundamental packaging issue. The problem is not that debfoster requires apt (it technically doesn't require it, though the default configuration does). Rather, the issue is that apt is nearly-but-not-quite essential for fink, so removal is allowed even though it may be a big problem for some users. And that debfoster seems to be removing some actually essential packages, too. I don't know exactly how debfoster uses this keepers file, but assuming it's the "live" list of intentionally installed pkgs, gotta be very careful how to handle upgrades. The list of Essential files can change...don't want to don't want to overwrite a live datafile. This is true. I think it's better to look at debfoster's facilities. The default debfoster.conf has 'UseEssential = yes', which should stop debfoster from removing essentials. So why are we seeing them being removed? Dave PGP.sig Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: [Fink-devel] Re: Providing default /sw/var/lib/debfoster/keepers with base-files package?
On Fri, Jan 21, 2005 at 05:57:23AM -0500, Dave Vasilevsky wrote: > On Jan 20, 2005, at 8:02 PM, Daniel Macks wrote: > >>>If a user is not carfull the system might end up unusable due > >>>to e.g. a missing apt while running with UseBinaryDist. > > > >That's not an "unusable" state, since fink will merely issue a "please > >install the apt pkg" warning. But anyway... > > I think what was meant was using the binary distribution (ie: > exclusively apt-get, no use of fink-the-program at all). Quite a number > of users don't even have the DevTools installed, but just apt-get > packages via the CLI or FinkCommander. If they lose apt, they're pretty > screwed. You or I might know we could go to the Fink bindist on the > web, download the .deb for apt, and re-install it via dpkg; but the > average user wouldn't. apt-get seems to be smart enough to know it is part of the "apt" package, and therefore treat it as "essential" in the formal (dpkg) sense. The problem is using dpkg/fink/FinkCommander to remove it. When one first installs fink, does it install the "apt" pkg? That would mean one has apt.deb. A purely binary user (i.e., no XCode) would have SelfUpdateMethod:point and Trees:stable/*, meaning the original apt.deb would still be the "correct" version (matching %v-%r in the PDB, so no compile needed to reinstall it by whatever tool he used to remove it). Would it help if fink should treated "apt" as (dpkg)Essential when running with UseBindist? > Perhaps this is an argument for making apt essential? If a significant > portion of the user base is stuck should apt ever be removed, it seems > to be pretty "essential" in the English sense of the word. Is there a > technical reason that it isn't essential? >From a maintenance point of view, the fewer packages that are (dpkg)Essential set the better. It really isn't (English)essential for build-from-source purists...I'd used fink for several years and never touched it until I started looking at the UseBindist implementation. But if it really is (English)essential for a large number of users and making it (dpkg)Essential is the easiest way to accomplish that, then so be it (especially since Essential:yes is just a change to the apt pkg and can so easily be changed again in the future should we change our minds). > >I don't know exactly how debfoster uses this keepers file, but > >assuming it's the "live" list of intentionally installed pkgs, gotta > >be very careful how to handle upgrades. The list of Essential files > >can change...don't want to don't want to overwrite a live datafile. > > This is true. I think it's better to look at debfoster's facilities. > The default debfoster.conf has 'UseEssential = yes', which should stop > debfoster from removing essentials. So why are we seeing them being > removed? *That* is a very good question (and solving it may alter the course of the whole preceeding discussion:). dan -- Daniel Macks [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.netspace.org/~dmacks --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IntelliVIEW -- Interactive Reporting Tool for open source databases. Create drag-&-drop reports. Save time by over 75%! Publish reports on the web. Export to DOC, XLS, RTF, etc. Download a FREE copy at http://www.intelliview.com/go/osdn_nl ___ Fink-devel mailing list Fink-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fink-devel
Re: [Fink-devel] Re: Providing default /sw/var/lib/debfoster/keepers with base-files package?
On Thu, Jan 20, 2005 at 04:33:36PM -0800, Remi Mommsen wrote: > On Jan 20, 2005, at 6:47 AM, Christian Schaffner wrote: > > > >We recommend more and more often to use the debfoster fink package to > >keep track of unneeded packages on a Fink installation. One problem > >that users are facing with debfoster is that it asks to remove too > >many packages during the first run: It asks to remove essential > >packages, and "important" packages (e.g. apt), and even debfoster > >itself. If a user is not carfull the system might end up unusable due > >to e.g. a missing apt while running with UseBinaryDist. That's not an "unusable" state, since fink will merely issue a "please install the apt pkg" warning. But anyway... > >There are two things that were discussed on #fink today to solve this > >problem: > > > >1. > >Let the package 'debfoster' depend on apt. If debfoster uses apt, then debfoster should Depends:apt, since apt is not an Essential pkg (nor should it be IMO). That's a pretty fundamental packaging issue. > >2. > >Install a default '/sw/var/lib/debfoster/keepers' file with the > >debfoster package (or with the base-file package). It should have the > >names of all essential and important packages and debfoster itself as > >entries. > > > >The package should of cause check for an already existing keepers file > >(probably through the ConfFiles field in the info file). I don't know exactly how debfoster uses this keepers file, but assuming it's the "live" list of intentionally installed pkgs, gotta be very careful how to handle upgrades. The list of Essential files can change...don't want to don't want to overwrite a live datafile. > >What is the general opinion about that? Remi? > > I would opt for (2), as this is a more general solution than having a > dependency on apt. I'll see if I can come up with a solution this > week-end (or if anyone feels like doing it, the better). > > A quick search gave me the following list of essential packages: > apt > base-files > bzip2 > bzip2-shlibs > cctools-extra > debfoster > debianutils > dpkg > fink-mirrors > fink-prebinding > fink > gettext > libiconv > libiconv-bin > ncurses > ncurses-shlibs > tar > unzip Case in point: fink is in the process of switching from ncurses* to libncurses*, and maybe dropping tar and unzip. When the installed libncurses5-shlibs suddenly became Essential:yes a few weeks ago, apt and dpkg immediately knew about it. However, this type of change is independent of fink itself (i.e., no new "fink" pkg was released), so distributing a keepers file as part of the fink pkg (or any other pkg) seems like just one more pkg-sync headache. dan -- Daniel Macks [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.netspace.org/~dmacks --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IntelliVIEW -- Interactive Reporting Tool for open source databases. Create drag-&-drop reports. Save time by over 75%! Publish reports on the web. Export to DOC, XLS, RTF, etc. Download a FREE copy at http://www.intelliview.com/go/osdn_nl ___ Fink-devel mailing list Fink-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fink-devel
[Fink-devel] Re: Providing default /sw/var/lib/debfoster/keepers with base-files package?
Hi, On Jan 20, 2005, at 6:47 AM, Christian Schaffner wrote: Dear Fink Developers We recommend more and more often to use the debfoster fink package to keep track of unneeded packages on a Fink installation. One problem that users are facing with debfoster is that it asks to remove too many packages during the first run: It asks to remove essential packages, and "important" packages (e.g. apt), and even debfoster itself. If a user is not carfull the system might end up unusable due to e.g. a missing apt while running with UseBinaryDist. There are two things that were discussed on #fink today to solve this problem: 1. Let the package 'debfoster' depend on apt. and 2. Install a default '/sw/var/lib/debfoster/keepers' file with the debfoster package (or with the base-file package). It should have the names of all essential and important packages and debfoster itself as entries. The package should of cause check for an already existing keepers file (probably through the ConfFiles field in the info file). What is the general opinion about that? Remi? I would opt for (2), as this is a more general solution than having a dependency on apt. I'll see if I can come up with a solution this week-end (or if anyone feels like doing it, the better). A quick search gave me the following list of essential packages: apt base-files bzip2 bzip2-shlibs cctools-extra debfoster debianutils dpkg fink-mirrors fink-prebinding fink gettext libiconv libiconv-bin ncurses ncurses-shlibs tar unzip Any additions? Cheers, Remi - "Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists else- where in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." Calvin (Bill Watterson) * Remigius K. Mommsen e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] University of California, Irvine URL:http://cern.ch/mommsen c/o SLAC voice:++1 (650) 926-3595 2575 Sand Hill Road #35fax:++1 (650) 926-3882 Menlo Park, CA 94025, US home:++1 (650) 233-9041 * --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IntelliVIEW -- Interactive Reporting Tool for open source databases. Create drag-&-drop reports. Save time by over 75%! Publish reports on the web. Export to DOC, XLS, RTF, etc. Download a FREE copy at http://www.intelliview.com/go/osdn_nl ___ Fink-devel mailing list Fink-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fink-devel
