[OpenIndiana-discuss] Questions about /var/pkg

[Matthew R. Trower]

On 1/12/24 04:41, Marcel Telka wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 12, 2024 at 04:08:12AM -0600, Matthew R. Trower wrote:
>> /var/pkg/publisher is exactly what I thought it was.  I am still 
>> not clear as to whether the format is committed(stable) across 
>> different versions of pkg5, and therefore safe to share across 
>> BEs.
> 
> The man page says: Interface Stability: Uncommitted

My understanding of the Interface Stability attribute is that it applies
to application programming interfaces (source and binary).  I would not
expect it to necessarily apply to the data storage/caching layer of a
program, as I would not expect that to be considered an application
interface layer.  Furthermore, the Interface Stability attribute was
conceived back at Sun, and applied to their specific release strategy.
OI has diverged significantly from Sun's release schedules,
methodologies and motivations, so you'll have to forgive me if I don't
take the attribute as gospel these days.

I'm really just asking: how likely, these days, is /var/pkg/publisher to
change in breaking ways?  I know from observation that it has changed at
least once since OpenSolaris, but that could mean once ever, once a
year, once a month... it could be changing twice a week for all I really
know (okay, that's an exaggeration, but hopefully you get my point).
The people who actually do the bulk of the work on pkg5, are in a better
position to know this than I ever will be through trying to scour man
pages and source diffs.  RTFM is fine and all, but sometimes it just
doesn't cut the mustard.

Ultimately it's not that big of a deal, I guess.  I was just hoping to
save some disk space instead of dragging around every package I've
downloaded since the beginning of time.  But I've got new disks coming
in now anyway, so... meh.



> and no (because if such files have no relation to IPS then they
> won't appear there; but maybe you thinks about different kind of
> "relation" :-))

No relation as in "not under management".  I doubt very much that pkg is
having those other kinds of relations :-)

If I install my own /usr/bin/zsh, then later install pkg://shell/zsh
through pkg, pkg will take my old /usr/bin/zsh and chuck it in the
lost+found --- because that existing file has no relation to IPS (it was
not under its management).  That is my interpretation of the man page,
anyway.  Seems sensible.

> I think yes (for example when you uninstall a package)

If uninstalling a package places files in lost+found, then I'm well and
truly confused.


-- Matthew R. Trower