Re: Detecting OS-provided software on Linux

[Iain Morgan <Iain.Morgan%nasa.gov@localhost>]

On Thu, Jan 23, 2014 at 08:29:19 +0000, Jonathan Perkin wrote:
> * On 2014-01-22 at 22:56 GMT, Iain Morgan wrote:
> 
> > Hello,
> > 
> > I'm hoping to use pkgsrc to build software that will be used within
> > environment modules on a shared filesystem for a compute cluster.
> > 
> > Initial tests are promising, but I've noticed that pkgsrc does not
> > detect all the software that was installed by the native (RPM) packaging
> > system. The resultant duplication of software is inefficient and
> > undesirable; particularly as I will have multiple independent software
> > trees managed by separate pkgsrc instances.
> > 
> > What I would like, is some way to either export information from a
> > system's RPM database to pkgsrc, or some means for pkgsrc to dynamically
> > query the installed RPM's when checking dependencies. Is there any easy
> > way to do either of these?
> > 
> > Assuming that there isn't already a script to create "fake" pkgsrc
> > database entries corresponding to the installed RPM's, what would be the
> > minimum that would need to be created for each entry to satisfy
> > dependency checks?
> > 
> > Also, is there any support for using environment modules with pkgsrc? 
> 
> Hi Iain,
> 
> This only works with a limited number of libraries, and in that
> instance you can use PREFER_PKGSRC=no in your mk.conf to ensure that
> the builtin versions are used.
> 
> If you are bootstrapping, use '--prefer-pkgsrc=no' to automatically
> put this into mk.conf.
> 
> To see whether a package supports this, check that there is a
> builtin.mk file in its pkgsrc directory.  This generally only works
> with libraries, it doesn't work for e.g. python as there are too many
> issues with doing that.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> -- 
> Jonathan Perkin  -  Joyent, Inc.  -  www.joyent.com

Thanks for the tip! I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but it sounds
promising.

As an aside, I'm wondering if I might be able to use pkgtools/rpm2pkg to
create "fake" pkgsrc database entries. From the description, it's really
intended for converting RPM's to pkgsrc packages, but I expect I can
make a modifed version that just creates the database entry.

-- 
Iain Morgan