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#1 2006-09-10 11:12:20

evdvelde
Member
From: Antwerp - BELGIUM
Registered: 2005-12-02
Posts: 57

New ideas for pacman features

I'd like to start a discussion about pacman and some features I would like to see in it.

If I compile something with srcpac instead of installing with pacman, it would be nice if pacman remembered that I did so and recompiled the package next time I get an update of it. For instance: I compile my own (beyond) kernel, so I have to compile the kernel modules I use too. It would be nice if it could happen automatically: the kernel modules already get updated with the new kernel, so it would be just a matter of remembering that I like to compile these packages.

srcpac already supports the automatic alteration of a PKGBUILD, but it would be nice to have a more systematic approach like the make.conf file on a BSD system. This would make it easier to compile some packages with other than the default options of the PKGBUILD. The current grep method is too heavily depending on the format of the PKGBUILD and fails when the maintainer changes the PKGBUILD.

What are your ideas/opinions?

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#2 2006-09-10 15:38:42

Dusty
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From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Registered: 2004-01-18
Posts: 5,986
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Re: New ideas for pacman features

This sounds more like a srcpac feature than a pacman feature. Srcpac isn't an official part of Arch Linux, so integrating anything into pacman isn't likely to happen. However, it was created by an arch linux developer. I don't know to much about what options are available in srcpac, but if you can enhance it without touching pacman (ie: add an intelligent update switch to srcpac), I'm sure he will accept the patch.

Dusty

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#3 2006-09-11 02:31:49

Dusty
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From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Registered: 2004-01-18
Posts: 5,986
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Re: New ideas for pacman features

I talked to Xentac, he asked if this was different from srcpac -Syu?

Dusty

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#4 2006-09-11 07:55:45

evdvelde
Member
From: Antwerp - BELGIUM
Registered: 2005-12-02
Posts: 57

Re: New ideas for pacman features

Dusty wrote:

I talked to Xentac, he asked if this was different from srcpac -Syu?

srcpac -Syu compiles updates I installed as package before too (or am I wrong here?)

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#5 2006-09-14 13:40:51

evdvelde
Member
From: Antwerp - BELGIUM
Registered: 2005-12-02
Posts: 57

Re: New ideas for pacman features

Dusty wrote:

This sounds more like a srcpac feature than a pacman feature. Srcpac isn't an official part of Arch Linux, so integrating anything into pacman isn't likely to happen.

Why should these programs be separated? I think it would be wonderful to have one package manager where you can choose what to compile and what to take from binary packages. While I like binary packages, now and again there are packages I have to compile and it would be nice if it could be done automatically. makepkg and srcpac are fine for installing these packages, but not when updating the system. An easier and more robust approach to changing PKGBUILDS automatically by using variables that can be defined in a BSD-like make.conf file would be great.

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#6 2006-09-14 14:07:05

Dusty
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From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Registered: 2004-01-18
Posts: 5,986
Website

Re: New ideas for pacman features

I'm not on my Arch box and I don't use srcpac, so I may be wrong here, but I know Xentac defines srcpac as a "pacman wrapper", ie: it is a replacement for pacman, it does everything pacman does (simply by calling pacman to do those things), but it also does some things differently and has a few extra options. I believe that srcpac -Syu will update all the binaries on your system by calling pacman -Syu and will also update the packages you have compiled yourself. Try it and see.

Dusty

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#7 2006-09-17 14:46:25

Klette
Member
Registered: 2005-05-20
Posts: 27

Re: New ideas for pacman features

I would like an option to rebuild the package db, by searching the system for files..  My /var/lib/pacman disappeared and its a world of hurt... heh

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