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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
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > -- 
> > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-request@lists.debian.org
> > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
> > 
> 

-- 
Stephen G. Traugott 
UNIX/Linux Infrastructure Architect, TerraLuna LLC
stevegt@TerraLuna.Org   
http://www.stevegt.com



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