Package management page is oversimplified

[alexander@…]

There are the following drawbacks on the ​http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/6.3/chapter06/pkgmgt.html page:

• It doesn't list all goals of package management. In addition of easy uninstallation and upgrading, the page must mention easy deployment and handling of configuration files.

• The "LD_PRELOAD based" subsection is better renamed to "Tracing the installation script", because one can either log installation with LD_PRELOAD, or with strace.

• Handling of configuration files is not touched upon at all. At least, please mention the decision not to list configuration files (i.e., those that the user may modify after package installation) in LFS and BLFS books, so that the task to figure them out is placed on the reader.

• Creation of package repositories is not mentioned. At least, please state that it is a complex task to duplicate a distro's infrastructure.

[Matthew Burgess]

Fixed the first & second bullet points in r8452. As for the remaining points:

LFS & BLFS do mention configuration files that may need to be edited following installation of a package. e.g /etc/nsswitch.conf, /etc/resolv.conf.

I'm not sure that package repositories are within the scope of either book - we teach how to build a Linux-based system, not how to be a distro or how distros supply packages/updates to their users.

[alexander@…]

LFS & BLFS do mention configuration files that may need to be edited

Well, they miss some files, or mention them on a different page. E.g., /etc/inputrc (which is, in fact, a configuration file for Readline) is mentioned on the "Creating the /etc/inputrc File" page, while /etc/scsi_id.config is not mentioned at all. If the packager forgets to mention a file, it will be overwritten without backup on a package upgrade.

Also, for creation of RPM packages, one must enumerate all files for which a changed MD5 sum is not an error.

As for repositories, some package managers (most notably, apt) are meant to be used only with repositories. Nobody uses dpkg directly. Thus, it is natural to mention the task of repository creation.

I am not suggesting that these tasks are solved by LFS. It is just necessary to warn the reader that such tasks exist and there are no hints about the possible errors, and that "it's all in my head" and "I rebuild everything every 24 hours" may well be the preferred solutions.

[alexander@…]

Also the word "depoyment" (i.e., build on one machine, install on several) doesn't appear on the modified page.

[bdubbs@…]

Expanded package management discussion and added a section on deploying an LFS system to another host.

Fixed at r8901.