At Sat, 22 May 2021 15:19:36 +0300, Staffan Thomén <staffan%shangtai.net@localhost> wrote: Subject: Re: Status of syspkg or similar > > I've often thought about how the not-exactly-core utilities like tmux > (but window would probably not have fallen into this category > were it still there), postfix and bind (possibly also ssh, openssl might be > too difficult to extract) _that have more alternate/newer versions in pkgsrc_ > could live in their own set so I wouldn't have to install them and then just > install the pkgsrc version and be stuck with two. There are many ways to install and select alternative software, and I think the well known and used ones (e.g. pkgsrc and adjusting one's PATH) are quite sufficient. There are also a great many different things in the base system that might be replaced or superceded by such alternatives, and (as you noted) not all of these base system things are (or can be?) easily separated into individual "system" packages. I think the main thing that would be useful would be a tool that could easily and safely(*) remove a "syspkg" group of files from a system, which I think also implies that a little more information from the "lists" files needs to be included in the /etc/mtree "sets" files. This should be sufficient to cover any issues with, for example, security flaws in any of these major subsystems that could be replaced with something from pkgsrc. I.e. this deals with the case of wanting to entirely remove one of the more complex base-system subsystems. Other smaller or less intertwined things are just as easily manually removed (and optionally replaced with something from pkgsrc), at least I think so. (*) "safely" as in without loss of any local, e.g. configuration, changes, etc., which is easily managed using the existing signature in the mtree files. As a side note -- the only thing I think is still a useful option is to set LOCALBASE=/usr, though I haven't actively done that since the 1.6 days (even though it should be easier now with fixes to pkgsrc to allow one to more transparently handle hierarchy differences between /usr and /usr/pkg). These day's I'm happy enough with setting PKG_SYSCONFBASE=/etc -- Greg A. Woods <gwoods%acm.org@localhost> Kelowna, BC +1 250 762-7675 RoboHack <woods%robohack.ca@localhost> Planix, Inc. <woods%planix.com@localhost> Avoncote Farms <woods%avoncote.ca@localhost>
Attachment:
pgpLdCSXYnGIG.pgp
Description: OpenPGP Digital Signature