On Sat, Nov 08, 2014 at 02:27:49PM +0100, Mathieu Bouillaguet wrote: > Hi, > > What needs to be implemented to add support for slackware > distribution in supermin ? hi Mathieu I'm on holiday at the moment and will give a more complete reply when I get back. In brief you need to be able to do a few simple package database meta operations such as listing all files in a package and listing the installed deps of a named pkg. This pre- supposes that slackware has such a packaging db. Pino CCd can give more details, and you can look at existing pkg systems in src/*.ml.

Hi Pino, Thanks for your reply and details. I started looking at the others package manager code and as I see it there is one main problem to port supermin to slackware distro. Slackware builtin package management tools (pkgtool and slackpkg) do not manage package dependencies. There is no easy solution to solve this problem. There are third party packet manager which manage dependencies but they are not supported and I don't personnaly use it. It would be possible to make supermin install only the packages entered on the command line by the user for slackware distro but maybe other tools rely on the package dependency installation semantic.

What I was suggesting, is to let the user manage depencies himself. This is what slackware users are used to do anyway. It means that we should be able to provide an exhaustive list of needed packages on the command line. As the semantic differ from the usual treatment of the PACKAGES arguments of supermin --prepare, this could be managed by a new option implying "do not search or install depencies for the given packages". What do you think ?

Le 11 nov. 2014 19:03, "Pino Toscano" <ptoscano(a)redhat.com&gt; a écrit : > Hi, > > (please do not top-reply...) > > On Tuesday 11 November 2014 18:32:10 Mathieu Bouillaguet wrote: > > What I was suggesting, is to let the user manage depencies > > himself. > > > > This is what slackware users are used to do anyway. > > > > It means that we should be able to provide an exhaustive list of > > needed packages on the command line. > > > > As the semantic differ from the usual treatment of the PACKAGES > > arguments of supermin --prepare, this could be managed by a new > > option implying "do not search or install depencies for the given > > packages". > > > > What do you think ? > > What you are suggesting covers just one of the requirements of > supermin for the package manager. The others, which I wrote in a > previous email, are: > - query name, version, epoch (if existing), architecture of a > package > - get the last "change time" of the package manager > - get the file list of a package (possibly with the information > about > > which ones are "configuration files") > > - download a package > > What supermin needs seems not met by the too limited package > management on slackware, I'm afraid. > > On the other hand, this does not imply you cannot use libguestfs: > with a driver-less supermin, you can build libguestfs without an > appliance (--disable-appliance), and use a "fixed appliance", i.e. > an appliance built on a different system, pointing libguestfs to > it. See also "LIBGUESTFS_PATH" in > > http://libguestfs.org/guestfs.3.html#environment-variables > > and you can find our Fedora-based appliances here: > http://libguestfs.org/download/binaries/appliance/ Sorry for the top posting, it's the default gmail app behavior. It didn't mention the other aspects because they are not a problem for a slackware port. The only "problem" is the package depency.

Hi Pino, Thanks for your reply and details. I started looking at the others package manager code and as I see it there is one main problem to port supermin to slackware distro. Slackware builtin package management tools (pkgtool and slackpkg) do not manage package dependencies. There is no easy solution to solve this problem. There are third party packet manager which manage dependencies but they are not supported and I don't personnaly use it. It would be possible to make supermin install only the packages entered on the command line by the user for slackware distro but maybe other tools rely on the package dependency installation semantic. What is your opinion about this ? How supermin is used by other tools like libguestfs ?

From a libguestfs p.o.v it'll be fine to list all packages needed (ie

Thanks for your reply Mathieu Le 10 nov. 2014 19:06, "Pino Toscano" <ptoscano(a)redhat.com&gt; a écrit : > Hi Mathieu, > > On Sunday 09 November 2014 16:14:32 Richard W.M. Jones wrote: > > On Sat, Nov 08, 2014 at 02:27:49PM +0100, Mathieu Bouillaguet wrote: > > > Hi, > > > > > > What needs to be implemented to add support for slackware > > > distribution in supermin ? > > > > hi Mathieu > > > > I'm on holiday at the moment and will give a more complete reply > > when I get back. In brief you need to be able to do a few simple > > package database meta operations such as listing all files in a > > package and listing the installed deps of a named pkg. This pre- > > supposes that slackware has such a packaging db. Pino CCd can > > give more details, and you can look at existing pkg systems in > > src/*.ml. > > As Rich said briefly, supermin needs to be taught about the package > manager running on Slackware. supermin needs it to perform some > operations on the system, such as: > - query the basic information about a package (name, version, and all > the basic attributes such as epoch and architecture, if present/needed > to unequivocally identify a package later) given its name > - get the last time the package system has "changed" (like after an > update, or having installed/removed some package); this is needed so > supermin can avoid querying the package system when the set of > installed packages has not changed since last time supermin was run > - get the list of dependencies of a package > - get the list of files of a package, marking whether a file is > considered "configuration file" by the package manager; usually this > is the case for files in /etc, which the admin can edit, and the > package manager carefully handles when updating packages providing > them > - download and extract packages from the sources of the package manager; > this is needed so supermin can pick pristine copies of the files of an > installed package, usually to have unedited configuration files > > supermin supports already few package manager, and you can find in the > src/ subdirectory their implementations: dpkg.ml, pacman.ml, rpm.ml. > > -- > Pino Toscano >

On Tue, Nov 11, 2014 at 06:41:40PM +0000, Richard W.M. Jones wrote: > On Tue, Nov 11, 2014 at 03:23:40PM +0100, Mathieu Bouillaguet wrote: > > Hi Pino, > > > > Thanks for your reply and details. > > > > I started looking at the others package manager code and as I see it there > > is one main problem to port supermin to slackware distro. > > > > Slackware builtin package management tools (pkgtool and slackpkg) do not > > manage package dependencies. There is no easy solution to solve this > > problem. > > There are third party packet manager which manage dependencies but they are > > not supported and I don't personnaly use it. > > > > It would be possible to make supermin install only the packages entered on > > the command line by the user for slackware distro but maybe other tools > > rely on the package dependency installation semantic. > > > > What is your opinion about this ? How supermin is used by other tools like > > libguestfs ? > > From a libguestfs p.o.v it'll be fine to list all packages needed (ie > including dependencies) in libguestfs.git/appliance/packagelist.in. > That should mean that the complete list of packages is passed to > supermin on the cmdline, so the supermin slackware dependency resolver > can be a no-op. Reading further in the thread - I agree with Pino that this is not ideal. It would be better to have the package manager db store deps. But I don't have any problems with a big list in libguestfs packagelist.in (defended by `if SLACKWARE ...') Rich. > Rich. > > > Thanks for your reply > > > > Mathieu > > Le 10 nov. 2014 19:06, "Pino Toscano" <ptoscano(a)redhat.com&gt; a écrit : > > > > > Hi Mathieu, > > > > > > On Sunday 09 November 2014 16:14:32 Richard W.M. Jones wrote: > > > > On Sat, Nov 08, 2014 at 02:27:49PM +0100, Mathieu Bouillaguet wrote: > > > > > Hi, > > > > > > > > > > What needs to be implemented to add support for slackware > > > > > distribution in supermin ? > > > > > > > > hi Mathieu > > > > > > > > I'm on holiday at the moment and will give a more complete reply > > > > when I get back. In brief you need to be able to do a few simple > > > > package database meta operations such as listing all files in a > > > > package and listing the installed deps of a named pkg. This pre- > > > > supposes that slackware has such a packaging db. Pino CCd can > > > > give more details, and you can look at existing pkg systems in > > > > src/*.ml. > > > > > > As Rich said briefly, supermin needs to be taught about the package > > > manager running on Slackware. supermin needs it to perform some > > > operations on the system, such as: > > > - query the basic information about a package (name, version, and all > > > the basic attributes such as epoch and architecture, if present/needed > > > to unequivocally identify a package later) given its name > > > - get the last time the package system has "changed" (like after an > > > update, or having installed/removed some package); this is needed so > > > supermin can avoid querying the package system when the set of > > > installed packages has not changed since last time supermin was run > > > - get the list of dependencies of a package > > > - get the list of files of a package, marking whether a file is > > > considered "configuration file" by the package manager; usually this > > > is the case for files in /etc, which the admin can edit, and the > > > package manager carefully handles when updating packages providing > > > them > > > - download and extract packages from the sources of the package manager; > > > this is needed so supermin can pick pristine copies of the files of an > > > installed package, usually to have unedited configuration files > > > > > > supermin supports already few package manager, and you can find in the > > > src/ subdirectory their implementations: dpkg.ml, pacman.ml, rpm.ml. > > > > > > -- > > > Pino Toscano > > > > > -- > Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones > Read my programming and virtualization blog: http://rwmj.wordpress.com > virt-builder quickly builds VMs from scratch > http://libguestfs.org/virt-builder.1.html > > _______________________________________________ > Libguestfs mailing list > Libguestfs(a)redhat.com > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/libguestfs -- Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones Read my programming and virtualization blog: http://rwmj.wordpress.com Fedora Windows cross-compiler. Compile Windows programs, test, and build Windows installers. Over 100 libraries supported. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/MinGW