Re: Debian on the Sharp Zaurus/SL-5xxx
On Sun, Jun 16, 2002 at 06:10:10PM +0100, Miah Gregory wrote:
> In message <[🔎] 20020616165342.GS12595@alcor.net> Matt Zimmerman
> <mdz@debian.org> wrote:
>
> > On Sun, Jun 16, 2002 at 05:32:42PM +0100, Miah Gregory wrote:
>
> > > I'm going to hope that you're just joking there, right?? We're talking
> > > about devices with severely limited amounts of ram and storage space.
> > > You don't want countless copies of licences, changelogs, and in most
> > > cases, even documentation all over the place.
>
> > Of course you don't. But the right way to solve that problem is to
> > allow dpkg to exclude these things when unpacking packages.
>
> Possibly.. Don't forget that such devices will also often be on the end of
> low bandwidth links, so size really does mean everything.. :-)
As we have shown with the debian-installer udebs, it is not difficult to
manage this within the existing Debian packaging infrastructure. For the
cases where it makes enough of a difference to be justified, we can provide
trimmed-down packages in the style of udebs (or perhaps use udebs themselves
if appropriate).
> > I confess to not knowing any more than this about the ipkg format.
> > However, based on what I know, this similarity seems to be a duplication
> > of effort. dpkg and existing Debian packages can, and will, be extended
> > to provide equivalent functionality without sacrificing other features.
>
> The size of the local package database is also a concern. Will any of the
> planned changes to dpkg address the size of the database, to make it more
> suitable for limited resource devices?
>From what I can tell by examining my Zaurus installation, ipkg addresses
this in the following ways:
1. The status file is stripped down:
Package: openssh
Status: install ok installed
Root: /
Version: 1.2.3
Package: qpe-filemanager
Status: install ok installed
Root: /
Version: 1.5.0-1
This seems reasonable; eliminating the descriptions probably saves a lot
of space.
2. The info database only contains file listings:
$ ls /usr/lib/ipkg/info
openssh.list
qpe-filemanager.list
qpe-nethack.list
qpe-terminal.list
This must mean that no prerm/postrm scripts can be used, unless they are
run from a binary package. It may mean that there are no maintainer scripts
at all. I don't find that to be a very good tradeoff, personally.
It would be nice if dpkg could exclude certain control files, such as
md5sums and shlibs, however.
Do you have any idea about the Root: stuff? It seems like it is providing
for various trees to be installed in different locations, which could be
quite useful.
$ cat /home/etc/ipkg.conf
dest root /
dest tmpinst /tmp/ipkg/inst
--
- mdz
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