[csw-maintainers] Replacing existing Solaris functionality by OpenCSW packages

[Maciej (Matchek) Blizinski]

On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 4:32 PM, Philip Brown <phil at bolthole.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 7:54 AM, Dagobert Michelsen <dam at opencsw.org> wrote:
>>
>>...
>> As there is a "install all" option in pkg-get which is used it
>> is adviseable to not install these replacemenet-packages by
>> default. This may be accomplished by one of the following
>> solutions:
>>
>> - Different [SVR4 pkg] prefix
>>
>> The addons would be named CSWX... to mark that they are Xtra
>> to install.
>>...
>>
>> - Different catalog
>>
>> The extra packages may be put in a separate catalog.
>>...
>
>
> Or by other methods.
>
> Such as defining additional standard global configs to go in csw.conf
>
> "replace_sun_pkgs=yes"
> or some such?
>
> Then a postinstall script could check for that, and
> rename/disable/replace/whatever as appropriate.
>
> I suppose we might even support different values.
>
> replace_sun_pkgs={replace,rename,???}
>
> (where one could mean simple "mv old binaries to .old", and another
> might be "actually put in symlink to our binaries, and yet another
> could mean "pkgrm conflicting")

One package can't remove another package upon installation, can it?

I think that the alternatives mechianism could be used to switch the
implementation:

mkdir /usr/libexec/sun
mv /usr/bin/foo /usr/libexec/sun/foo
update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/foo foo /usr/libexec/sun/foo 30
update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/foo foo /opt/csw/bin/foo 20

In this way, the Sun binary is still used.

However, this could get messed up during OS patching or OS upgrades, I
suppose.  It's much better to have the conflicting SUNW packages
uninstalled.

Anyway, about handling the "install all CSW" scenario, isn't it better
to just skip the packages which conflict with already installed ones?