[pacman-dev] The time has come- pacman 3.1 testing releases

[Nagy Gabor]

> The time has come. I really want to get pacman 3.1 out the door, and
> to do that, we need to test this thing a lot.
> 
> I am currently ONLY supporting i686, and you will need libarchive
> 2.4.0 installed from testing. However, if anyone on this list would
> like to step forward and volunteer to build the package for x86_64, I
> will gladly host the built package.
> 
> I've provided the PKGBUILD and accompanying files. You can use
> versionpkg to build this package on your own, or once you have pacman
> 3.1 installed makepkg has versionpkg functionality built right in so
> you can just use that to rebuild a new version.
> 
> Notable changes and things to know:
> 1. The sync DBs are now in a sync/ subdir in your pacman DB directory.
> Thus, the old top-level dbs are obsolete. This should hopefully
> clearly separate the local and sync dbs and keep people from wiping
> that important local one.
> 2. I WOULD NOT recommend using the --root option at this point. I
> still need to make some fixes, and its behavior wrt other path options
> is a lot different than pacman 3.0.X.
> 3. Consolidated mirrorlists- you don't need 5 of them anymore. See
> below for a bit more info on this, and take a look at the installed
> /etc/pacman.conf and /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist files.
> 
> So without further ado, instructions for upgrading/testing (PLEASE
> read all instructions before actually doing the upgrade!):
> 
> 1. Because this package will replace your stock pacman, you either
> need to put the package in your own local repo, or add my [pacman]
> repo to your pacman.conf. The second is probably a safer bet and will
> allow you to get updates I make to the package anyway. Once you add
> the repo, the package name is pacman-git.
> 
> 2. Once installed, you will see that you get a whole bunch of pacsave
> files. A lot of these are related to the mirrorlists being
> consolidated into one "mirrorlist" file instead of having 5 separate
> but basically identical lists. I kept these on my system just so I can
> use the pacman2.static binary if something goes horribly wrong. (Of
> course, you would have to remove the pacsave extension from all of
> these files to use them).
> 
> 3. A pacman2.static binary has been included in the package, just in
> case. Hopefully no one needs to use it.
> 
> 4. One issue is kind of weird, and may be a bug in the way we do
> replaces handling. Your original pacman.conf will be moved to
> pacman.conf.pacsave, and the new one installed as pacman.conf. Of
> course, you will need to do some merging of the config files, but
> unfortunately they end up backwards from the norm.
> 
> 5. Point 4 also applies for makepkg.conf, but the contents of this
> file have changed enough that you should probably just start a new one
> anyway.
> 
> A note to testers- please let me know if anything in your upgrade path
> is different from above. This will really help us later when it comes
> to finalizing the real upgrade path. And if you hit a problem, please
> submit a full report to the mailling list and/or Flyspray (this means
> a descriptive title, steps to reproduce, and --debug output).
> 
> I have this installed, so don't worry too much about it killing your system.
> :P
> 
> And now the links and stuff:
> Package/DB: http://www.archlinux.org/~dan/pacman-git/
> PKGBUILD/files: http://www.archlinux.org/~dan/pacman-git/pacman-git/
> 
> pacman.conf entry:
> [pacman-git]
> Server = http://www.archlinux.org/~dan/pacman-git/
> 
> -Dan

Some really small TODOs to mention for 3.1:
-update bash_completion (add --asdeps for example)
-the documentation of -S and -R needs some updates too (groups and provisions
aren't mentioned in man): in more general most of the libalpm specific stuffs
are undocumented (someone should "fast-read" the source(comments) and document it)

Bye

PS: a bigger TODO: %REASON% handling should be fixed imho, before final release.


----------------------------------------------------
SZTE Egyetemi Könyvtár - http://www.bibl.u-szeged.hu
This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/