Re: Package format/management ramblingss

[Soeren D. Schulze]

Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
>    > However, having some sort of per-user customizability might be
>    > nice too.  Each user could have a package subdir of his home dir.
> 
>    Does this mean the user ``contributes'' packages to the system?
> 
> I don't like this, consider the following scenario: user A install a
> package foo-1.1 that contains a trojan.  User B tries to run this
> program unknowingly; and thus gets infected by the trojan (consider
> the harm this would do if user B is root).

I did not suggest this, I was just trying to understand the posting.

> What one could do if a user wishes to "override" a installed package
> is by providing say a enviroment variable, PACKAGE_SEARCH_PATH, where
> they list what directories to look in when listing /bin and friends.
> 
> But this will produce a completely different problem, one would have
> to research /bin (and friends) on each access, or cache all values
> for each user.

Yes, I talked about this in a follow-up of the posting you have replied
hereby:

---
When you request /bin/emacs, it therefore has to search
/packages/*/bin and /home/<me>/packages/*/bin -- excluding the
directories it does not prefer -- for the file `emacs', which is very
inefficient.  As a solution, it could use a hash tables -- created
either at any change of .pkgpref or on-the-fly for any already found
package; in any case, it should be saved on disk on shutdown.  It is
not the perfect solution, though.
---

I think I would prefer a file -- more powerful and more permanent. (I
am afraid my stupid mail client removed the indention of the
pseude-Lisp code.)

>    In Debian, you have to choose between stable, testing or unstable
>    as the release.  Using packages from different releases at the same
>    time is possible either by pinning (preferring combination of
>    releases) or by installing them in chroot environments.
> 
> On the GNU system switching between versions Could be done by
> accessing:
> /extracted-packages/emacs-VERSION-THAT-ISNT-INSTALL/bin/emacs and
> using /bin/address@hidden

Yes, I talked about this in my recent posting -- sent a few minutes
ago.

>    I have another issue related to this one, but I cannot really
>    decide whether to post now or to wait.  Not to confuse everyone
>    with two related topics at the same time, I am waiting for this one
>    for now.  If you are interested, please tell me and I will post
>    then.
> 
> Please post it; just use a different subject name and you won't be
> confusing two different topics.

OK, I will do.
But be a bit patient, please, I wrote it at night on a (double-sided)
sheet of paper.


Soeren Schulze