Re: eliminating -source packages
On Sun, 18 Jun 2000, Joey Hess wrote:
> * Add a "apt-get install-source" command. This will always unpack the
> source into /usr/src (or some other location set in the apt config
> file). It will also register the source as installed in a list
> somewhere (or, perhaps no list is needed).
> * Add an "apt-get upgrade-source" command. This will upgrade all installed
> source packages, reading the list (or perhaps, just upgrading
> everything that looks like a source package in /usr/src).
> * (Later, apt really should support satisfying build-depends, but that
> is somewhat orthagonal to this proposal.)
> Jason, what do you think, apt bloat, or worth it? It could just be
> impelmented as wrapper shell scripts. Hm.
No, I have thought of this before, it is a good idea. Shell scripts really
wouldn't do it justice..
There are some issues though, what exactly should be done for upgrade?
Nuke the old files and unpack the new ones? Install new ones along side?
Etc..
Also, dpkg-source is not really suitable for this kind of task, it doesn't
have good enough error handling+recovery to work as well as we expect dpkg
to. That means a new low-level tool that is an analog to dpkg (except for
source packages) needs to be created that can maintain the list of
installed sources, and dpkg-source would be beefed up and regulated into a
role more like dpkg-deb.
Jason
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