Arch Linux

Storm

Member

From: Hungary

Registered: 2014-09-12

Posts: 144

Custom built packages cohabiting with the Arch package version

Greetings!

I have a setup where multiple different custom built versions of a package (Krita) co-exist in my system. The way it's done is that I have several build and install directories, and a little script that replaces a symlink pointing to whichever install dir I want to use.

So, I have this structure:

/opt/krita-versions/active/ [symlink pointing to chosen version]
/opt/krita-versions/version1/
/opt/krita-versions/version2/

etc.

In Cmake I specify the install dir as [...]/active/, and then this directory is added to my PATH.

So every time before I build or use a version I run the script to point the symlink [...]/active/ to the appropriate version. Currently I use a custom build script that does this, so I just run "buildkrita [version]", and when using it I have dedicated launchers that run the symlink switch script and then simply runs "krita;".

The purpose of this setup is that whichever version I have selected will be recognized by the system as installed, and will for example be used to open krita files.

So far, this works perfectly for years. However, I would like to be able to have the Arch package version installed and cohabiting as well. But there are a bunch of problems:
1) If the Krita package is installed, it will take priority over my custom PATH, so currently I need to uninstall it before using my custom versions.
2) If I were to simply change my setup so that instead of [...]/active/ I use the Krita package's install dir as symlink point, and move the Arch package version into its own version folder, then every time there is an upgrade to Krita I would need to make sure to run my script to set the version, so that the upgrade will overwrite the appropriate folder.

So I'm wondering how to solve this? I want to retain my ability to switch between versions any time, but also be able to just run pacman -Syu without having to worry about Krita.

Thanks in advance,
Storm

Last edited by Storm (2019-05-03 17:09:25)

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