Subject: Re: layered software on NetBSD
To: None <current-users@NetBSD.ORG>
From: Johnny Chi-Lung Lam <jlbg+@andrew.cmu.edu>
List: current-users
Date: 03/20/1997 15:38:21
On Thu, Mar 20, 1997 at 11:22:51 -0800, Scott Ellis wrote:
> Yes, this seems like a good method.  This lets the user easily uninstall
> things they don't want (by just rm'ing PKG-VER), and cleaning up a
> few broken symlinks that result from that.  One of my personal
> peeves is having software go into /usr/local/ and then when you go to
> uninstall/updte it have to track down all of the cruft in /usr/local/lib
> etc that the package brought with it.

There two simple solutions to this out there already.  One is being
used by the NetBSD/amiga port to have these kinds of pre-compiled
binaries available for all of the m68k ports.  It installs packages in
/usr/local/PKG-VER and provides install/uninstall scripts that
add/remove symlinks into the appropriate places in the /usr/local
tree.  The other solution is GNU stow which installs all packages in
/usr/local/stow/PKG and adds/removes symlinks in the /usr/local tree.

For aesthetic reasons, I've found stow to be better.

	Just a thought,
--
   Johnny C. Lam
   Department of Statistics			lamj@stat.cmu.edu
   Carnegie Mellon University			http://www.stat.cmu.edu/~lamj/

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