Re: Bundling .debs (in a .deb?)
That's the right direction, but it's both too complicated and doesn't
do enough -- it only captures (and optionally archives) the .debs, and
doesn't deal with debconf db deltas. It also only deals with
upgrades ("Possible actions are dselect-upgrade,upgrade and
dist-upgrade"), and doesn't support archiving only the results of
"install foo".
Steve
On Fri, Jan 10, 2003 at 07:35:27AM +0000, Paul Hedderly wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 09, 2003 at 02:29:44PM -0800, Steve Traugott wrote:
>
> Look at apt-zip
> --
> Paul
>
> > Hi All,
> >
> > Does anyone know of any existing tool which bundles a .deb package,
> > and its prerequisite packages, and its related debconf db deltas, into
> > a single archive? The resulting archive might be a tar.gz, zip, or
> > even another .deb...
> >
> > It might be useful to think of this in terms of encapsulating the
> > results of a given 'apt-get install foo' or 'apt-get upgrade', so that
> > the same actions can be "replayed" later on similar machines. (For
> > reasons why you might want the same actions replayed on other machines
> > rather than whatever apt-get decides to do at some later point in
> > time, see http://www.infrastructures.org/papers/turing/turing.html.
> > Specifically, the technique described in section 7.3.1.1 just now blew
> > up on our machines when woody upgraded -- the available packages all
> > changed. We're running apt-proxy, but have multiple locations, and
> > the problem of keeping the apt-proxy caches consistent between
> > locations makes the machine builds too fragile, too dependent on
> > environment.)
> >
> > I'm in the middle of writing a bundling tool right now, but don't want
> > to re-invent the wheel. You'd use it like this:
> >
> > apt-mkdeb install foo
> > [ ... answer debconf questions, if any ... ]
> >
> > ...this would create a 'foo-deb.deb' in the current directory.
> > This .deb contains all of the .deb's that would have been
> > installed by 'apt-get install foo' on the same machine. It also
> > contains the debconf db values that would have been set during
> > installation.
> >
> > To replay on other machines, just install foo-deb.deb on them.
> > The postinstall script unpacks the debs and configures them,
> > unattended.
> >
> > One thing I'm having doubts about -- the correct storage and execution
> > of debconf values. I'm thinking about debconf-show to extract them
> > from the first machine and debconf-communicate to set them on
> > subsequent target machines. I don't want to just diff config.dat,
> > because I don't want to assume debconf db format or location. Is
> > there a better way?
> >
> > Any votes for a better name than 'apt-mkdeb'? Any preferences for how
> > that 'foo-deb.deb' file should really be named, considering the fact
> > that it's particular to a machine and a point in time? Maybe
> > 'foo-HOSTNAME-EPOCH.deb'?
> >
> > Steve
> > --
> > Steve Traugott
> > Speaker Coordinator, Silicon Valley Linux Users Group
> > http://www.svlug.org
> > --
> > UNIX/Linux Infrastructure Architect, TerraLuna LLC
> > stevegt@TerraLuna.Org
> > http://www.stevegt.com
> >
> >
> >
> > --
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> >
>
--
Stephen G. Traugott
UNIX/Linux Infrastructure Architect, TerraLuna LLC
stevegt@TerraLuna.Org
http://www.stevegt.com
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