On Fri 29 Oct 2004 at 15:55:12 -0400, Todd Vierling wrote:
> What does pkg_hack do that requires generating the PLIST before install
> time?  If this is such a bother, why not try using pkgviews?[*]

I suppose needs it because it compares PLIST of the old installed
version and the one that's about to be installed.  pkg_hack is clever:
if the new version installs a shared lib with the same major number, the
new package simply replaces the old one.  Otherwise, the old shared
library is moved over to a new package, including all its dependency
information. This way only the runtime files of the package remain, any
later development will happen with the new package.

I do use pkgviews on my laptop, but so far it doesn't do yet what I
hoped it would. Part of the difficulty is that too many packages are
still "overwrite" packages. So you still get the "upgrade hell" problems
(although less often I suppose). And pkg_views also cannot replace a
package in-place if there is a critical bugfix, because necessarily the
nb-version is bumped (at a minimum) so it's installed in a different
directory than the version it's supposed to fix. pkg_hack automatically
gets this right (even "make replace" without pkgviews would).

> -- Todd Vierling <tv@duh.org> <tv@pobox.com>
-Olaf.
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