Re: pkgin comments (mostly doc)

[Thomas Klausner <wiz%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

Hi Greg!

I didn't write it, but I've been using it for some time, so here are
some comments:

On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 10:46:55AM -0500, Greg Troxel wrote:
> Reading the man page, I see the following missing information (and I
> really don't know the answers):
> 
>   - There is some database (pkgin update), but I don't know where it is
>     stored.

/var/db/pkgin is pkgin's directory
below that it has:
cache: for downloaded/linked binary packages
pkg_install-err.log: pkg_add's error log 
pkgin.db: its own internal database
sql.log: no idea

>   - It's not clear what giving a list of packages to fug or ug does.

I'm pretty sure they are ignored.

>   - It's not clear what 'pkgin upgrade' does to packages that depend on
>     a package that's being upgraded.

It leaves them alone. When upgrading, pkgin only touches packages
whose PKGVERSION has changed.

>   - Packages are downloaded to someplace, and cached.  I don't know
>     where, how to control the location, whether there's a way to control
>     the size, and whether there is any autocleaning of things that are
>     obsolete (no longer in the current remote summary?).  Presumably
>     clean removes them all.

See above, /var/db/pkgin/cache. I don't think the location is
configurable. I don't know how it cleans it up, if at all.

>   - The "keepable" notion seems obviously to be (not) "automatic=YES".
>     Is it really just doing that?  If not, is there a separate database,
>     and why?

I can't answer that.

>   - I don't really understand the notion of "upgrade" as only being
>     about "keepable" packages.   Why would someone want to upgrade those
>     only, but not dependencies?

I'm not sure what you're asking. If foo is keepable and DEPENDS on
bar, pkgin will upgrade bar if a newer version is available.

> Comments other than the man page:
> 
>   - There doesn't seem to be a way to list packages which are
>     automatic=YES (non-keepable) and not required, but "pkgin -n ar"
>     seems to do this.
> 
>   - sometimes packages are listed in wrapped form, rather than one per
>     line.  I find that unhelpful, as it's much harder to scan

I agree. Having one line per package will make it hard to read too if
you upgrade many packages, but having that and having the packages
sorted and not in random order like now would still be a huge
improvement.

>   - It would be nice if the upgrade operation set the unsafe_depends
>     flag, like pkgsrc's make replace, to ease interoperation of pkg_rr
>     and pkgin in a mixed source/binary environment.   Perhaps pkgin
>     could essentially get pkg_rr functionality.

How is 'unsafe_depends' marked in packages?

>   - It would be nice if somehow one could set DEPENDS_TARGET=pkgin so
>     that a dependency would be installed via pkgin if possible when
>     building from source.

Neat idea.
 Thomas