Subject: tracking added packages (was: firefox 1.0.1 behaviour changed badly on current/i386)
To: NetBSD Packages Technical Discussion List <tech-pkg@NetBSD.org>
From: Greg A. Woods <woods@weird.com>
List: tech-pkg
Date: 03/21/2005 02:53:26
[ On Tuesday, March 15, 2005 at 14:25:35 (-0500), Steven M. Bellovin wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: firefox 1.0.1 behaviour changed badly on current/i386 
>
> >Always check for important messages _after_ you've installed a package,
> >not during the install:
> >
> >$ /usr/sbin/pkg_info -D firefox-gtk2
> 
> That doesn't work very well for dependent packages installed 
> automatically -- they've long-since scrolled by.
> 
> High on my wishlists for pkgsrc: an automatically-generated log of 
> things I installed at the top level, so I know what to rebuild, and a 
> log of what gets built by any given invocation of make, for precisely 
> the reason I give above.

I do this in two ways -- 1) I'm starting to lean more and more towards
only using the binary packages I build on my "production" (and test)
machines; and 2) I run something like "pkg_info | sort > /etc/packages"
in the daily scripts and I've added that filename to /etc/changelist so
that I get a nightly report of any changes in the list.

The latter ensures I am always reminded of what packages were installed,
even from binaries, and even if they were dependent packages.

I would like to find time to try to hack on pkgdepgraph though so that
it would use the BUILD_DEPENDS lines that I've added to "pkg_info -B".
That would seem to be another piece in the puzzle.

However I agree pkg_add should log all the packages it added, and
whether they were added as dependents or not.


BTW, FWIW, I really REALLY dislike the idea of "pkg_add" e-mailing the
messages files, even as an option.  If anyone wants them in e-mail then
they should help implement this logging idea so that they could write a
little script that could run "pkg_info -D | mail -s 'important pkg
messages' root" for the added packages.  pkg_add has _WAY_ too many
features and knobs already without adding e-mail capability to it.

-- 
						Greg A. Woods

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