In alt.os.linux.slackware on Wed, 11 Aug 2004 00:10:16 -0400
Dominik L.. Borkowski <dom@vbi.vt.edu> wrote:
> Zebee Johnstone wrote:
>> to my specs. I suspect that neither of these do more than config and
>> makefile?
>
> neither of them have anything to do with config nor makefile [i assume
> you're talking about ./configure script].

BUt they don't do more than that from what I could tell looking at them.
They make the basic slack package, but how do they handle wanting to do
more than "install file here"?

> i should have been more specific: it's not required to be present in
> slackware packages for them to be valid packages, and there is no default
> place. a lot of software will have changelogs in /usr/doc/<software name>.

That's what I was after. I figure if I'm going to write packages, I
should do it in the usual way, meaning put things in the usual places.
But how to find out what those are?

> out of curiosity, have you ran slackware yet? the reason why i'm asking is
> i'd like to know if i'm asked to recite back the man page for removepkg, or
> elaborate more on my experience.

yes, I've installed it, yes I've read the page. The pages aren't
written for package writers but package users. So if you can get
removepkg to do more than delete the files that were in the package
tarball and tell the package manager it has done so, I wouldn't expect
the man page to tell you that. any more than the rpm man page tells you
how to create rpms.

It is of course possible that I haven't realised how primitive the
package system is, but thought it must have changed a little since I
last installed slack back in 1996.

For example... if your install file moves a config file to a backup
name, and puts its own file there instead, can removepkg replace that
new file with the backup one?

If you have a file /usr/local/etc/fred.newconf and your install script
copies /usr/local/etc/fred.conf to /usr/local/etc/fred.conf,bak and then
/usr/local/etc/fred.newconf to /usr/local/etc/fred.conf, what does
removepkg do when invoked? I assume it will attempt to remove
/usr/local/etc/fred.newconf, and you can't tell it to do anything else.

If your install script inserts a line into crontab, then how is that
removed? What do people do if they want to set up a bunch of machines,
do them all by hand? Use gnuconf? Some other system?

>
> then maybe you should consider sticking to an rpm based distribution. what
> made you want to switch to slackware?

Because I want something that keeps fairly up to date but I can install
my own builds and config files for things I wish to be at certain
release versions or compiled in certain ways like MySQL or Apache, that
can be installed as server only with the minimum of GUI setup, that
isn't "release early release often" as Fedora is but stable, that isn't
as complex and boggling as Debian, and isn't as costly as RHEL.

Slack seems to do what I want nicely except for the minimal installer
which doesn't lend itself to good control of multiple server machine
configs. I don't wnat to have to go to gnuconf for various other
reasons, and doing things in RPM works well for me.

I don't want to run a mixed rpm and pkg system because that way lies
dependency hell.

Zebee