[OpenIndiana-discuss] Questions about /var/pkg

[Marcel Telka]

On Fri, Jan 12, 2024 at 08:21:17AM -0600, Matthew R. Trower wrote:
> 
> 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

Your expectation is wrong.  Almost everything constitutes an interface.
See also attributes(7).

> 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.

Sure, np.  In that case you should consider everything as Volatile :-).
See attributes(7).

> 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

These days?  Unlikely, because of the activity in the source repo at
https://github.com/OpenIndiana/pkg5/commits/oi/ .

> 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.

That really depeneds on your usage scenario.  I run some systems almost
always up-to-date with non-illumos-gate updates at least once a day and
full updates (with reboot) every few days and here is an example:

# du -sh /var/pkg/publisher/
1.17G   /var/pkg/publisher
#

and I do nothing special to keep it that way.  This particular machine
have almost all available packages installed.

> > 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.

Yes.  Sounds reasonable.

> > 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.

To confuse you a bit more here is an example:

# find /var/pkg/lost+found/ -type f
# echo test > /usr/lib/python3.9/vendor-packages/pytest_randomly-3.15.0.dist-info/TEST
# pkg uninstall pytest-randomly-39 pytest-randomly
...
# find /var/pkg/lost+found/ -type f
/var/pkg/lost+found/usr/lib/python3.9/vendor-packages/pytest_randomly-3.15.0.dist-info-20240112T154031Z/TEST
# cat /var/pkg/lost+found/usr/lib/python3.9/vendor-packages/pytest_randomly-3.15.0.dist-info-20240112T154031Z/TEST
test
#

-- 
+-------------------------------------------+
| Marcel Telka   e-mail:   marcel at telka.sk  |
|                homepage: http://telka.sk/ |
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