Subject: Re: "make install" owerwrites files without asking
To: Pavel Cahyna <pavel.cahyna@st.mff.cuni.cz>
From: Jeremy C. Reed <reed@reedmedia.net>
List: tech-pkg
Date: 06/27/2005 09:33:51
On Mon, 27 Jun 2005, Pavel Cahyna wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 27, 2005 at 09:13:16AM -0700, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
> > On Mon, 27 Jun 2005, Pavel Cahyna wrote:
> >
> > > Why??? I looked at the PLIST for libxen and all the information needed to
> > > prevent this problem was there:
> >
> > Some PLISTs are dynamic, auto-generated.

I forgot to mention, that I do agree that it would be useful to check in a
PLIST (if available) to see if file exists on system. I guess this check
could be overridden if FORCE_PKG_REGISTER is defined.

> OK, isn't this a reason to not have dynamic PLISTs? Another reason being
> that having an independent PLIST allows to check if the files were
> installed correctly (I saw a case where a package created a /icons
> directory!)

Checking if files were installed correctly is good.

> (Third reason being that all the existing PLISTs could be collected and
> make available through a search engine. Sometimes I know what command I
> want, but don't know what package contains it -
> http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages#search_contents can be very
> useful.)

That is useful. Instead we could use the +CONTENTS from all created binary
packages. It would be more complete for what we offer and have correct
paths, etc.

The PLISTs often have dynamic entries or entries specific for operating
systems or any custom options. I do see it would be valuable to have a
list of all potential files too, but maybe a search based on +CONTENTS
would be more doable for now.

 Jeremy C. Reed

 	  	 	 BSD News, BSD tutorials, BSD links
	  	 	 http://www.bsdnewsletter.com/