[Libguestfs] Add support for slackware in supermin

[Mathieu Bouillaguet]

2014-11-11 19:49 GMT+01:00 Richard W.M. Jones <rjones at redhat.com>:

> 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 at redhat.com> 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 at 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
>

What are the drawbacks of using libguestfs with the fixed appliance instead
of supermin with builtin distrib support ?

Thanks
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/attachments/20141115/f922cd31/attachment.htm>