On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 11:33 AM, Darac Marjal
<mailinglist@darac.org.uk> wrote:
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)?
We would probably keep updating the zsh installed in the alternate root.
I just want to have the system default zsh updated in the usual manner
and rest assured that the system default is patched often enough.
The alternate zsh can be updated, perhaps by the user, whenever they
want a later and greater version of zsh. (Assuming I can get this
working from dpkg, otherwise we'll be building from tarball - but
I was hoping Debian wouldn't force me into that).