On Mon, Apr 28, 2003 at 09:59:20AM +1000, Brian May wrote: > On Sun, Apr 27, 2003 at 03:52:13PM +0300, Jarno Elonen wrote: > > > There might be things to think about though: some packages have lots > > > of conffiles, and that could mean some extra disk space, which not > > > everyone will want to spend. Maybe make it optional. > > > > Bzipping could help, and maybe even tarring them all to one file. As a quick > > test, I bzip-tarred my entire /etc. The resulting file was merely 1.4MB even > > though there are about 1300 'ii' or 'rc' packages on my system. > > You don't want to have to gunzip everything though just so you can > update one file... > > How about: > > /var/lib/xyz/package1.tar.gz > /var/lib/xyz/package2.tar.gz > ... > /var/lib/xyz/package3.tar.gz > > So you have one tar.gz file per package. > > Or, if that is too many files in one directory, > use the package pools naming system: > > /var/lib/xyz/p/package1.tar.gz > /var/lib/xyz/p/package2.tar.gz > ... > /var/lib/xyz/p/package3.tar.gz Hmm... Does this lead into the idea of having a package-pool entry's configuration files stored outside the .deb? As a seperate package, maybe? Anyway, the idea being that we keep the load of tarring up package config files off each user, and into a single location (package maintainers) and there's always a set of canonical default configuration files available... Such a package's postinst would need special handling to let the user know that the default configs had been updated, and if there's no previous version of the configuration files, to install 'em. Of course, then a diff3 would be possible at that moment since we'd have old confs, new confs and local confs all present at once. (Less useful in a tarball, but there could be a way 'round that?) That would give another route to people who're installing a whole bunch of identical machines.... Setup their configs and throw 'em into tarballs, and then no configuration work needs to be done per machine. :-) Just an idea, anyway. I don't have an itch for it myself, so it's all words for the moment. -- ----------------------------------------------------------- Paul "TBBle" Hampson, MCSE 6th year CompSci/Asian Studies student, ANU The Boss, Bubblesworth Pty Ltd (ABN: 51 095 284 361) Paul.Hampson@Anu.edu.au Of course Pacman didn't influence us as kids. If it did, we'd be running around in darkened rooms, popping pills and listening to repetitive music. -- Kristian Wilson, Nintendo, Inc, 1989 This email is licensed to the recipient for non-commercial use, duplication and distribution. -----------------------------------------------------------
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