Re: [LONG MESSAGE] Re: `du' control files
Hi,
>>"Charles" == Charles Briscoe-Smith <cpbs@debian.org> writes:
Charles> In article <[🔎] Pine.LNX.3.96.980213112824.12555P-100000@monet>,
Charles> Christian Schwarz <schwarz@monet.m.isar.de> wrote:
>> With the new lintian check I discovered that some packages install
>> a `du' control file (contains the output of the du command).
Charles> The only way I could think of to achieve this was a simple
Charles> copy of the output of `du' run over the filesystem archive.
Charles> With the usual 20/20 hindsight, it might not have been such a
Charles> good idea to put it in a separate file, since it is usually
Charles> so small; it might be better to add it as a new field into
Charles> the control file, so it can be added into the Packages file
Charles> (the downside being that the Packages file immediately grows
Charles> by approximately another fifth of its size). Alternatively,
Charles> it could be discarded after installation, since it would, by
Charles> that time, have served its purpose.
Have you ever considered dpkg --contents | awk '{print $3 "\t" $6}'
which takes but seconds and can be thus done on the fly? You can even
exlude all the conffiles with a suitable grep -v step.
Charles> I appologise for doing this in what might seem a rather
Charles> subversive manner, without any public discussion; I agree
Charles> that we should have the discussion now.
Right. I think it is about time to scotch these files.
Charles> I think that the `du' output is the most compact way in which
Charles> we can provide enough data for a package-installing front-end
Charles> to work out in advance whether there will be enough space to
Charles> install a package, even when there are lots of mounts and
Charles> symlinks in the filesystem.
No, the most compact way is not to provide any redundant file
at all. the deb file contains all the information required. I think
any package with these files is buggy, squandering disk space in
useless redundancy.
manoj
--
"As the expression goes, we spend our youth attaining wealth, and our
wealth attaining youth." Douglas Coupland, from _Generation X_ (Tales
for an Accelerated Culture)
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@acm.org> <http://www.datasync.com/%7Esrivasta/>
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