On Mon, Nov 12, 2001 at 12:20:51PM -0600, Frederick Bruckman wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Nov 2001, Michael Richardson wrote:
> 
> >   I think that it was Todd, maybe someone else, who suggested
> > an option to pkg_admin or something that would "delete" a package,
> > leaving only its libraries behind (for old binaries), creating
> > a new package which was just the libraries.
> 
> You mean <http://mail-index.netbsd.org/tech-pkg/2001/05/31/0004.html>?
> As I wrote there, the solution requires more than just a single option
> to "pkg_delete". ("pkg_admin" would not be involved at all, as it only
> does operations on the whole database.)
> 
> >   Did this ever happen?
> 
> I'm still working on it, if I could only find a little more time. My
> current plan is to write a little utility to manipulate the package
> database directly, entry-by-entry (half way done with that), and then
> to write the main program (which would wrap the package tools, or the
> utility, as appropriate) in "awk".
> 
> Frederick

Alternatively, someone could tart up 

	ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/misc/agc/pkg_retire.tar.gz

and make it suitable for consumption. It basically "retires" the
.so's in a package into a separate retired package, allowing you
to install a newer version of the library-containing package in
its place, and fixes up all references of package dependencies to
point to the retired package.

It's of limited use, since ELF libs use the major number to resolve
the soname.

The pkg_retire package attempts to minimise data loss problems by
using pkg_tarup just before it does its stuff, but I'm not responsible
for anything that happens - this is development stuff, and you do
this at your own risk.

Personally, I don't believe this is the way to go.

Regards,
Alistair