Re: Software/HD ecology

[Tribhuvan <loka@rcn.com>]

Ajanta wrote:


> What is needed: 
> 
> (1) To change the culture, so that every program comes with a safe and
> complete uninstall option. 
> 
> (2) To empower the user, so he/she can easily discover what a
> particular file on his/her computer is for, and where are all the files
> related to the package xyz. I think you want to be able to specify the
> source (GNU or FSF), name (emacs), and version (27.5) with intelligent
> defaults, like all versions when none is specified.
> 

pkg managers are an ideal model dealing with installing
binaries, logging the multiple cp operations, version
install date to /var.
This allows for on demand reporting on all of the files
that were copied to the system and their subsequent
removal (or 'management' as the name pkg manager implies.)

Only, this is absent when installing from source.
When done compiling and doing "make install" according to
your ./configure options, the output of "make install"
has scrolled off conveniently to bit heaven. Thus, gaining
lots of control over the _install_ process, we usually suffer
later, not having a record of where everything went.
If you're the only sys admin to ever touch the machines,
and your memory is that good, well - there's got to be a
better way. Just as the wonderful standards that have
come to place during the _install_ process (aka automake,
autoconf, pkgconfig (ala gnome)), would it really be
too far out to suggest:

* The relevant output of 'make install' be systematically
* captured and stored to something like
* (/var/log/auto-conf/pkg.version.log). Then, this formatted log
* can be fed to another relatively simple script to report on or
* operate on said files.

* To work, those involved with distributing source may standardize
* their make-install output to contain flags to be read by a piped
* script, which will capture the relatively few lines relevant
* to any subsequent package management.

Tribhuvan