On Mon, 24 Mar 1997, Ken Hornstein wrote:

> >Nah.  Irix's packaging utility is one of the greatest added-value
> >features of Irix.  It supports a multi-depth hierarchy of packages,
> >with seperately installable sub-packages, multiple-way `fat' packages,
> >very in-depth dependency information, and neato command line, terminal
> >menu and motif interfaces to install and remove packages.
> 
> I kinda have to agree with der Mouse here ... "complicated and undocumented"
> definately describes it.  The SVR4 package tools are _so_ much simpler.

Actually, Irix's package tools are quite well documented...  Substantially
better than SVR4's ever were (no they are not the same tools, in case you
missed that...), and better documented as well...

You can find the manual for them online at my old employer, BTW... check
out:

	http://santafe.arch.columbia.edu:88/SGI_Developer/

> >The Irix
> >version of install(1) even has mods to work with the package system...
> 
> Which breaks the IRIX install so that it's totally noncompatible with
> every _other_ Unix install program.  (Not surprising that these are the

Will you restrict yourself to what you know about, please?  It happens that
the flags to interact with the packaging system are _in_addition_ to the
traditional BSD install flags.  The syntax of Irix install(1) is a compatible
superset of NetBSD's install...

--
				Jim Wise
				jim.wise@turner.com