[csw-maintainers] Problem with "alternatives" on updates

[Ben Walton]

Excerpts from Dagobert Michelsen's message of Fri Feb 05 13:34:03 -0500 2010:

Hi Dago,

> I guess the only way is to use an update-hook.
> (/me taking deep look into http://wiki.opencsw.org/package-hooks)

I agree with your assessment, but we should note that pkg-get doesn't
support hooks yet (unless I missed an update), so this could be
thorny.  Phil, are there plans to update pkg-get?  I know the last
time this was mentioned, you didn't have the time.  Has that changed
or is there someone else willing to add the feature?

> One more thing about hook script naming conventions: When we
> start putting *a lot* of hooks in the directories this can
> become a serious performance bottleneck. I suggest to restrict

Would you even notice amidst the stock slowness of pkgadd/pkgrm? :)

> calling of scripts to scripts starting with [0-9]. Additionally,
> scripts with the same name as the package are called. This way
> we avoid executing possibly hundreds of scripts where each
> one is only valid for a single package.

Anyone know whether the Debian hook system has this limitation?  I
hadn't envisioned this sort of package-specific hook when I came up
with this.  The intent was for generic actions that should be done for
all (or at least the bulk of) packages.  The system doesn't preclude
this specificity, but I think it could be handled slightly
differently.

Deliver a single package containing the hooks required to handle the
various cases presented by this challenge.  The hook looks for a file
in /etc/opt/csw/pkg/CSWfoo/handle-altnernatives (or something) and
takes the required action if that file is present.

That way, you've made a CAS style generic hook script.  Would that
work better than each package dropping it's own custom hook in the
directories to handle (essentially) the same task?

Thanks
-Ben
-- 
Ben Walton
Systems Programmer - CHASS
University of Toronto
C:416.407.5610 | W:416.978.4302

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