- Pacman-dev - lists.archlinux.org

[pacman-dev] Things to iron out
by Aaron Griffin 17 Oct '06

17 Oct '06

There are some differences of opinion on some of these things - I'd like to hear developer opinions (especially judd) on the following topics, so we can get a few of these things out of the way: ** -$ARCH package name suffix - do we want this? How should we handle backwards compatability if we do move to this scheme? ** SHA1 vs MD5 - opinions/views on this? I know frugalware seems to like sha1, but md5 is the defacto file-validation mechanism (if only for checking if the download is uncorrupted). As Juergen brought up on the arch-dev ML: md5 may be easy to collide when dealing with something like ps files that contain hidden data, but binary files, like .gz files, are very difficult to find collisions for. ** Version number - Frugalware is currently at 3.4.X, while we haven't released a single 3.0 release - how should we handle this? Jump right into 3.5 ? ** Anything else? I'd like to hear any outstanding issues the Frugalware peeps have. Thanks, Aaron

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[pacman-dev] RC delay
by Aaron Griffin 13 Oct '06

13 Oct '06

Just wanted to let anyone interested know that I haven't had time over the past 3 days to do anything worthwhile with pacman... I had planned on pushing an RC out, but won't be able to do it until early next week... currently everything works except the actual downloading and haven't had a chance to determine the exact issue... Side note though, _alpm_downloadfiles_forreal doesn't use the PM_ERR_* error codes, and returns 1 on error, which happens to be "Out of memory".

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[pacman-dev] What about managing optional dependencies?
by Alessio 'mOLOk' Bolognino 13 Oct '06

13 Oct '06

I'm not (yet :) a good C programmer, so it's just a hint, and I don't know if it's easily implementable in pacman, but sometimes there is software that works even without another one, but having this installed let you perform other functions (probably this sentence is bad written, hope you all know what an "optionale dependency" is ;) . As you know there is no way in pacman to handle this kind of dependency except writing a warning message in the .install . I think would be useful to have (at least) an array where to put this type of deps. Am I just a fool? -- Alessio 'mOLOk' Bolognino

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[pacman-dev] pacman and perl
by Charles Mauch 12 Oct '06

12 Oct '06

I just joined this list to ask a few questions about perl modules in arch, and to explain (whine) about some of the workarounds I've tried to keep my own modules up to date with the CPAN archives. First, I'd like to say that for the most part, the perl modules provided by the arch devs for the most part work fine. But there always seems to one or two that are out of date. This isn't a problem unique to arch, I run a couple of debian boxes and run across the same situation all the time. There are simply so *many* possbile modules it can be an impossible situation to keep current. Because I can't live without the latest and greatest, over time I've come up with a few workarounds that I'd love to eliminate. First, I use pacman.conf to block the installation of a few modules, and keep my own copies maintained. Some packages simply INSIST on being managed by pacman, so in that case - I usually let arch have it's way an download and install what packages I want newer versions of into a ~/perl directory. By setting the PERL5LIB variable, I can ensure my local copy gets used instead. Unfortuatly, my ~/perl directory is growing at a rapid clip in arch. So here are some suggestions I think would make perl hacking in arch easier. 1. Dump whatever perl-module naming scheme (if there is one) for arch perl modules and simply use the CPAN module name. I don't know how many times I'll lookfor Foo::Bar, only to discover pacman's named it perl-bar-foo or some other nonesense. Is there a current naming scheme for modules? 2. I dont know how reasonable this is, but I would *love* to manage all my packages with the cpan tool. Maybe pacman could act as a wrapper to the cpan command? Or as an alterative, maybe provide an option to install cpan modules instead of packages into some other directory. Yes, I know the implications of something like this on PKGBUILD's might be horrendous. :) 2a. Yes, cpan is horrible at times. An alternative might be cpanplus. 3. Another idea would be to create a small tool which creates pacman style tarball bundles out of *all* the cpan modules once every few weeks, and stores them on a repo somewhere. Something like http://rpmpan.sourceforge.net/ for arch. This would eliminate the need for cpan at all. When i dicovered http://perl.arix.com/cpan2rpm/ I just about sh*t myself the idea was so cool too :) I do not have a webhost that could host or build this kind of repo, but I'd be happy to help maintain/run such a system. Anyway, some ideas. Thoughts? Am I just spinning my wheels? -- Take it easy, Charles FSF Apologist, WikiNut, Concrete Analyst, etc. :: Playing "Hang Tough" by Fluke (Puppy)

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[pacman-dev] $ARCH suffix on packages
by Aaron Griffin 11 Oct '06

11 Oct '06

So I actually expected someone to start this, as I was curious. I know frugalware uses the architecture suffix on packages, and Xentac thinks this is a good idea. I'd like to hear reasons. I don't really feel that "RPM and DEB do it" is a good enough reason. I mean, if that reason was good enough, we'd be using RPM/DEB in place of pacman packages. The way I see it, I don't think pacman needs to know the architecture it's running on. Installing "pkg-foo" should be no different on i686 or PPC. Therefore, I think that adding the architecture suffix is extra information that's not really needed. What is gained by having this suffix?

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[pacman-dev] Documentation
by Aaron Griffin 09 Oct '06

09 Oct '06

I have merged all the changes from frugalware, and all pactests work (except for sync898 which VMiklos and I already talked about). Now, I'm on to the documentation. $ grep -ir "frugal" | grep -ve "@frugalware.com" | wc -l 385 That's without email addresses. So yeah, I didn't pay attention to the documentation patches. Most of these changes are PKGBUILD -> FrugalBuild. I think I caught all the pkg.tar.gz -> fpm and db.tar.gz -> fdb changes before patching. I'd like to see if we can some up with a decent way to allow for us to use the same documentation base, as sedding this stuff on merge seems like a waste of time. The simplest solution is to just make them all .in files and set autoconf variables like: BUILD_SCRIPT_NAME = PKGBUILD PKG_EXT = pkg.tar.gz #already discussed in the TODO etc etc Does this sound worthwhile? Are there other ideas? I'm trying to open up discussion here and look for any and all suggestions. Thanks in advance, Aaron

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[pacman-dev] Problems with frugalware splitname changes
by Aaron Griffin 09 Oct '06

09 Oct '06

The changes to the alpm splitname function are fine and all, except they do not accomodate archlinux packages, which do not append the architecture to the end of the package name (instead we put them in directories based on the architecture). Could you please make these changes so that they can accomodate for either arch of frugalware? Currently, it directs pacman to install a foo-1.0-1-.pkg.tar.gz package. (note the trailing dash). I have a few more things to delve through, but I won't be back until late tonight, so I figured I could poke you guys to make the change (if you have time). Thanks, Aaron Griffin

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[pacman-dev] [PATCH] Java bindings
by VMiklos 08 Oct '06

08 Oct '06

hi http://darcs.frugalware.org/darcsweb/darcsweb.cgi?r=pacman;a=commitdiff;h=2… so finally after python and perl, java bindings arrived :) udv / greetings, VMiklos -- Developer of Frugalware Linux, to make things frugal - http://frugalware.org

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[pacman-dev] Time for changes
by Aaron Griffin 08 Oct '06

08 Oct '06

Ok, I think it's about time I picked up pacman developement, seeing as we really have no one else doing it. I've been busy, so I was really hoping someone else would volunteer, but what the hell. If you frugalware guys could send me a full diff (here or offlist) of your repo compared to the trunk, that'd be great. I don't like applying patches without verifying them, so I'm going to step through each hunk (this is why I originally requested them as the seperate patches sent to the ML, but I can deal with it either way). One thing i plan on doing right off the bat: I want to enable a side-by-side install with the current pacman, so that we can get some real testing by those (like me) who don't want to overwrite the stable pacman. This is just informational, but it shouldn't affect the frugalware guys. To the furgalware team: you have more experience with this new pacman that I do... could you give me a brief "what's changed" - functionality wise. I mean, when actually using pacman3, what is done differently? What future directions are we going for? I'd like to get this stable as soon as possible, but once that's done, I have a handful of nifty features I wanted to add (those on the dev list: I want to add filesystem hooks first, then some more advanced output logging). There are also some potential changes to gensync and friends, depending on what direction we go with some svn changes... but that's off topic. Anyway, let me know. Aaron Griffin - phrakture -

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[pacman-dev] [PATCH] support for mtime checking @ http database download
by Tino Reichardt 25 Sep '06

25 Sep '06

Hello list, I have done a small patch, which adds mtime checking for the database download on http archives... overview: - one new function called HttpGetMod() in ftplib.c - some new if's @ pacsync.c I think there may be a need for it ;) -- regards, TR

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