Re: common udpkg and uapt-get functionality
On Mon, Nov 27, 2000 at 07:55:59PM -0800, Joey Hess wrote:
(Some comments, take them how you like)
> We need a retreiver controller, but it does *not* need to look like apt.
> I'm mostly concerned that we don't know how the retreiver controller is
> supposed to work. Ok, it can download debs and tell udpkg to install
> them. All well and good, but how does it know which debs to download?
main-menu has (aiui) a list of all .udebs installed. The .udebs start
off unpacked but not configured in general, they only get configured
when the user selects a menu item, and the configuration is the process
of answering the appropriate debconf'ed questions from the package's
postinst.
There'll be a handful of udebs already unpacked and configured: at a
minimum the one containing the boot-floppies kernel that you just booted
with, busybox.udeb and main-menu.udeb.
If all the udebs that you might ever want are already unpacked, you only
need to write to the debconf database (the answers to any questions need
to be stored for backtracking), the udpkg database (so you know which
packages are configured and which aren't for the main-menu), and the
/target device. This might make boot-from-CD-no-drivers.tgz-no-nothin
installs pleasant (since you'd just need a kernel, and a ro root
filesystem on the CD).
Normal case though is that your floppy only had room for a few things,
and you'll get the rest from CD, NFS, http, or so. In this case you'd need
some sort of "enabling" udeb that lets you say:
* I want to retrieve .udeb's from here
* I want to retrieve all but the emacs.udeb (because I don't
have time to d/load it)
and it would then go and download all those udebs, install them, and
return to a new updated main-menu.
This would imply debconf/udpkg would have to be somewhat re-entrant.
I think the "do udebs have to be installed to be visible to the user"
question is the key here though. Seems a really weird thing to say yes to,
but I can't see any reasonable way to implement it if the answer is "no".
Cheers,
aj
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.
``Thanks to all avid pokers out there''
-- linux.conf.au, 17-20 January 2001
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