Re: Installing debian package independent from system

[Darac Marjal <mailinglist@darac.org.uk>]

On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 11:24:38AM -0300, D G Teed wrote:
> A user would like the latest and greatest zsh and we have
> a deb package for it.  For security purposes I want to
> keep the slightly older version of zsh obtained and maintained
> from debian packages as the system default zsh.
> 
> I'm willing to install the later version of zsh in an alternate directory,
> say under their home or in /usr/local for the one user.
> 
> I thought perhaps dpkg --root /usr/local/zsh with a copy of
> /var/lib/dpkg placed under /usr/local/zsh would do the trick,
> but it isn't happy as some part of this still believes we
> are working on the main system dpkg path:
> 
[cut: errors]
> 
> Building from source would work too, but typically has care and feeding steps
> just to get all the deps in line.
> 
> What is the best way to use a deb package and not have it as part
> of the system's knowledge of installed packages?  It is OK if at runtime
> zsh has dependancy on system libs.

Well, I can see this, at least, being a problem. What if, for example,
the latest version of zsh depends on a version of a system library
that's incompatible with your current libraries (i.e. an ABI change)?

I would suspect your best bet is to set up a chroot with the new zsh and
its associated dependecies and set up an alias for the user such as
"alias new_zsh='chroot /path/to/chroot /bin/zsh'".


-- 
Darac Marjal