Dear All (especially maintainers of distributions Additions packages), I have been thinking again about our old problem with the Guest Additions, namely how a user can simply install (i.e. update) the "native" Additions which come with VirtualBox without interfering with the packaging system if the guest system they are using comes with Additions pre-installed. My latest musings are something along these lines:
* All files installed by the Additions would be in a single folder (/opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-<version> for the native package, and e.g. /usr/lib/VBoxGuestAdditions for a distribution package). * The Additions would have contain a set-up script, which distribution packages could run as part of their post-install, which would build and install (to /var/lib/VBoxGuestAdditions, not to the standard kernel module folders) the kernel modules and put symlinks into the Additions folder in place for /usr/bin/VBoxClient and others. * The set-up script would also install an uninstall script as /var/lib/VBoxGuestAdditions/uninstall.sh or similar which would reverse the effect of the set-up script and allow in particular simple upgrading of a distribution package to a native one without needing to touch any files managed by the packaging system. If this was present it would be called at the start of the set-up script as part of an upgrade. Do any of the relevent people (Gianfranco? Larry? Sérgio? Who else?) like or dislike any of this, or have better suggestions? I see that it would notably go against the trend of separating the kernel modules into their own package or even putting them into the kernel package like Ubuntu does. And it would not allow upgrading from earlier distribution packages - we would continue to ask the users to uninstall them manually, which is the safest but not the user-friendliest solution. Thanks and regards, Michael -- ORACLE Deutschland B.V. & Co. KG Michael Thayer Werkstrasse 24 VirtualBox engineering 71384 Weinstadt, Germany mailto:michael.tha...@oracle.com ORACLE Deutschland B.V. & Co. KG Hauptverwaltung: Riesstraße 25, D-80992 München Registergericht: Amtsgericht München, HRA 95603 Komplementärin: ORACLE Deutschland Verwaltung B.V. Hertogswetering 163/167, 3543 AS Utrecht, Niederlande Handelsregister der Handelskammer Midden-Niederlande, Nr. 30143697 Geschäftsführer: Alexander van der Ven, Astrid Kepper, Val Maher _______________________________________________ vbox-dev mailing list vbox-dev@virtualbox.org https://www.virtualbox.org/mailman/listinfo/vbox-dev
