Re: Software/HD ecology

[Fredrik Staxeng <fstx+u@update.uu.se>]

Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org> writes:

>Fredrik Staxeng <fstx+u@update.uu.se> writes:
>> >Those seem like pretty reasonable ideas; in more concrete form, perhaps
>> >they could be added to the GNU programming standards or something.
>> 
>> I think that right thing is a gnu-install program. This would be
>> called from install targets in the makefiles. It would log the
>> files installed, and then you could do gnu-uninstall emacs.
>
>The GNU coding standards in general do not presume any external
>non-standard dependencies -- that is, everything they say can
>theoretically be accomplished given only the package in question -- and
>specify _what_ you should do rather than the mechanism by which you
>should do it.

Yes, coding standards do not, on their own, actually do anything. 
The addition to the coding standards would be "the configure script
should check for the existence of gnu-install". 

>So certain package might want to use a `gnu-install' program that does
>the book-keeping for them to meet the coding standards, but they'd have
>to have their own copy of that program in their distribution (though
>they needn't actually use it if their configure script detects a native
>version).  Other packages may choose to simply do it another way.

I was think more, "if you want uninstall functionality, install gnu-install
first". Perhaps the biggest packages should require it, and therefore
include it in the distribution. But it would be overkill for gzip.

>It might be useful for users to have a `gnu-uninstall' program, but such
>a thing should be an optional additional package that uses the basic
>information provided by each package, as specified by coding standards.

I think the other way around is more practical, that the packages
directly support gnu-install. 

Perhaps I have not made the mechanism clear. The idea was the makefile
calls "gnu-install package version file dest", instead of install.sh
or BSD install. This is a simple extension of what is already done
today. 

>> I think that undo logic has to be derived automatically. Manually
>> writing things like that too error-prone, especially if they need 
>> ongoing maintenance.
>
>That's true, and maybe this would mean that most packages would end up
>using a standard `gnu-install' program/script -- but it should be up to
>the package to decide.

I would like to be able to force packages to use a tool that I trust. 
If it is easy enough to do, I would implement support for it and send
patches to the maintainer.

-- 
Fredrik Stax\"ang | rot13: sfgk@hcqngr.hh.fr