DSL Ideas and Suggestions :: Filelist w/ .dsl and .tar.gz packages to uninstall



It would be nice to include a filelist or even uninstall.sh with .dsl and .tar.gz packages, so that people could remove appl cleanly, only for applications, not for base sys libriaries
This could be useful, although a few things come to my mind concerning why this isn't done....

1) myDSL applications are made primarily for liveCD or other compressed setup, such as frugal.  In this case uninstall is usually unnecessary, since a reboot is all that is needed to restore the system's original state.  Personally I can't see too many situations where one would have the need to uninstall individual apps in this type of setup (not saying the situation doesn't exist, just that it's uncommon).  For a harddrive installation, it is recommended that you use deb packages or source installs rather than myDSL.

2) Making this kind of change would require rebuilding the whole myDSL system, possibly including all myDSL apps already made.  Perhaps it is not worth the time and effort required to implement this feature.

3) There are some .dsl packages which overwrite files in the original DSL system.  In order to prevent the removal of these files during uninstall would require extra work for both the creator of the package and for the Keeper of the myDSL Archive (ke4nt).  It may be a small thing, but i could see it still causing problems.

4) The number of .uci packages is steadily growing.  I see a future in which all myDSL packages are mountable and umountable, eliminating the need for an uninstall.
Quote (mikshaw @ June 24 2005,09:58)
This could be useful, although a few things come to my mind concerning why this isn't done....

1) myDSL applications are made primarily for liveCD or other compressed setup, such as frugal.  In this case uninstall is usually unnecessary, since a reboot is all that is needed to restore the system's original state.  Personally I can't see too many situations where one would have the need to uninstall individual apps in this type of setup (not saying the situation doesn't exist, just that it's uncommon).  For a harddrive installation, it is recommended that you use deb packages or source installs rather than myDSL.

2) Making this kind of change would require rebuilding the whole myDSL system, possibly including all myDSL apps already made.  Perhaps it is not worth the time and effort required to implement this feature.

3) There are some .dsl packages which overwrite files in the original DSL system.  In order to prevent the removal of these files during uninstall would require extra work for both the creator of the package and for the Keeper of the myDSL Archive (ke4nt).  It may be a small thing, but i could see it still causing problems.

4) The number of .uci packages is steadily growing.  I see a future in which all myDSL packages are mountable and umountable, eliminating the need for an uninstall.

1. Agreed

2. See the debian package checkinstall or watch-install or something like that... it's possible to "watch" the installs and build a list of files ourselves without adding to the work of package maintainers.

3. Yes, this is a sticky corner case.

4. I honestly don't know about this... involves a bunch of wrappers or recompiles of apps... OR post-install scripts... I think a .UCI mounted in /opt but with soft links into the rest of the filesystem would be a great compromise, but not possible until we have some sort of post-install script support.
One way around the wrapper situation would be to utilize /opt/lib and /opt/bin directories in the base system, where symlinks could be added when mounted, and removed on unmount (similar to the add and remove of icons and menu items).

But personally i don't really see that compiling a program to run in /opt is much more difficult than building a .dsl from a .deb, and that extra work is outweighed by the added ability to more easily strip down the program and customize it for use in DSL.
The /opt/bin and /opt/lib option has been discussed before.
But there are still some challenges , even with that in use.

Depending on the program, some applications during the
duration of their execution , STILL insist of finding
needed things in certain locations..  

Recompiling would be the best way to solve this,
if your app allows the use of certain compile-time switches..

Truly, the wrappers seem to do a fine job for most of the
binary contributions I see submitted, depending on the apps needs.

A post-install, and post-uninstall  script would seem unnecessary,
if the extension and application is assembled and compiled properly..
Any configuration needs can be handled within the wrapper at execution time..

Since DSL doesn't allow custom code in the extensions,
this seems kinda moot anyway ( excepting the wrappers )

User created scripts and executables make me nervous, anyway,
from a support and/or 'source code available' point of view..

73
ke4nt
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