From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Mike Fedyk Subject: Re: software packaging and ReiserFS v4 Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2003 13:35:47 -0700 Message-ID: <20030905203547.GE19041@matchmail.com> References: <20030903165409.GD4714@rahul.net> <3F565A8F.4010209@botz.org> <20030903213742.GA13146@rahul.net> <3F58D2CD.3050801@mrs.umn.edu> <20030905194413.GA19041@matchmail.com> <20030905201806.GV31864@vestdata.no> Mime-Version: 1.0 Return-path: list-help: list-unsubscribe: list-post: Errors-To: flx@namesys.com Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20030905201806.GV31864@vestdata.no> List-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: Ragnar Kj?rstad Cc: Grant Miner , Bennett Todd , reiserfs-list@namesys.com On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 10:18:06PM +0200, Ragnar Kj?rstad wrote: > On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 12:44:13PM -0700, Mike Fedyk wrote: > > On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 01:15:41PM -0500, Grant Miner wrote: > > > If you are making a packaging system, I recommend you do not allow > > > scipts, since they open up a whole can of worms. (They're impossible to > > > invert, introduce security problems, make additional work for GUI > > > package managers, and cause too many problems.) > > > > What do you replace them with then? > > I think if scripts were to be removed from the packaging system you > would have to add a package-feature for every single thing that scripts > are currently used for. > > If you look through a collection of packages I think you will find that > they typically do things like: > - create users > - start / stop deamons > and so on. > > So the package-system would need a way to specify that a user is part of > the package (that would be very easy with a /etc/passwd.d-system) and > that deamons that are part of the package should be started at install > and stopped at uninstall-time. > > There are probably dozens of other examples of common operations - and > you would not be able to remove the script-feature unless 99% of what > they are used for is not needed anymore - so it's a complicated task. Great, so now you have a scripting language in the installer. What did you just achieve? If you want gui integration of the scripts, just make nice wrappers of the standard unix utilities that create a window saying "creating user x", or prompting the user for data, or printing a notice. You could probably even take the ncurses library, and add the wrappers there. But let the people who want to do this choose the best way...