Re: Random string generation during *-install

[Taylor R Campbell <campbell+netbsd-tech-pkg%mumble.net@localhost>]

   Date: Mon, 25 May 2015 13:34:29 +0200
   From: Jean-Yves Migeon <jeanyves.migeon%free.fr@localhost>

   Date: Mon, 25 May 2015 13:34:29 +0200
   From: Jean-Yves Migeon <jeanyves.migeon%free.fr@localhost>

   Le 25/05/2015 13:15, Taylor R Campbell a écrit :
   > (tr -cd '[:graph:]' | head -c 20) < /dev/urandom
   >
   > There's a slim chance that on some exotic Unixoid platform pkgsrc
   > supports, you can't assume there will be a /dev/urandom.  But I
   > wouldn't worry about it until someone actually trips over it.

One bit to highlight in this is to write </dev/urandom outside the
pipeline, not in one of the subcommands, so that the whole pipeline
will exit with failure in the slim chance it doesn't exist, in order
to make sure that someone actually trips over it instead of quietly
getting nothing in that case.

   That's almost what I did, the only difference being that I "LC_ALL=C" 
   right before calling tr. On some platform it tries to parse /dev/urandom 
   bytes as UTF-8 encoded strings (as per locale) and tr(1) chokes when 
   encoding is invalid.

Hm.  I don't observe this on NetBSD with LANG=en_us.UTF-8.  Curious.

   > Don't use pre-install and do-install for this -- use the INSTALL
   > script alongside the Makefile.  The pre-install and do-install make
   > targets are always (unless you explicitly set USE_DESTDIR=no, which is
   > ill-advised) run at build-time when installing into a destdir before
   > creating a package, not at install-time when you actually install the
   > package.

   This is what the pkgsrc's guide says, but alas it does not say what I am 
   supposed to do to patch in some code in INSTALL. So what would be the 
   recommended way to alter a pkginstall INSTALL script when generated by 
   the templates? Does that mean someone(tm) has to "manually" patch 
   WRKSRC/.pkginstall/INSTALL?

It's a file you write alongside the package's Makefile.  See, e.g.,
mail/mutt-devel/INSTALL.  I believe this should be included in the
binary package's +INSTALL script even if you cause auto-generated
installation actions, e.g. by requiring user/group creation.