[csw-maintainers] checkpkg plugins

[Maciej Bliziński]

[topic changed to checkpkg plugins]

2011/3/7 Ben Walton <bwalton at opencsw.org>:
> What about 'plugins' to checkpkg. These would still be scripts (any
> language) but would be run by checkpkg.  They could be triggered by
> an environment variable or some other mechanism that points checkpkg
> at a directory to use.
>
> The checkpkg run could then call each script in the directory and bail
> if $? != 0.

The environment in which the checking functions run, is somewhat restricted.

- no access to original .pkg file
- no access to unpacked files
- no assumptions about the host architecture, OS release, or even the
operating system type can be made

The checking code can only communicate with a designated interface,
which allows to make certain queries or assertions, e.g. "which
packages contain files named libbar.so.1, an in which directories are
these files?", or "Package CSWfoo needs file /opt/csw/lib/libbar.so.1
because binary /opt/csw/bin/foo has libbar.so.1 in NEEDED and
/opt/csw/lib in RPATH".  The data available to the checking functions
are in the form of a single data structure, a combination of
dictionaries and lists.

It is possible to fit a plugin architecture into the existing code, if
communication paths are provided.  I could imagine a bit of Python
code which would wrap plugins from a certain directory, and took the
responsibility of communicating with them.

Maciej