pkgin (probably not weekly) news

by Emile `iMil' Heitor - 2011-09-28

Foreword: this post will be written in english as many pkgin users don’t speak french. Sorry to my french readers then, and sorry also to my english readers as i’m not as fluent in english as i am in french :)

I subscribed to jmmv’s blog, The Julipedia, a while ago and found his idea of the “Kyua: Weekly status report” very inspiring, that’s a good way to keep your users informed on how the project is moving and keeps you focused on your TODO (although i hate TODO’s…). I doubt i’ll have the time to write a weekly report, but at last i’ll try to write a post whenever important updates are made to my beloved project.

So let’s begin ! As you, pkgin users, may be aware of, i’m working on the future 0.5 release, which includes massive internal changes plus some features that have been asked and i found interesting. So, in addition to the features i already listed in this mail sent to pkgsrc-users@, here are some hilights on recent changes:

  • pkgin now has a new logo !
  • it is now possible to export / import your keep-list, pretty much like dpkg’s get/set-selection. The exported list is in pkg_chk’s format. Thanks wiz@ for the idea
  • pkgin install can now take a “blob” as an argument, i.e. pkgin in 'mysql-server<5.5', thanks filip@ for the idea
  • pkgin now uses pkgsrc’s pkg_install for NetBSD also
  • added the -t modifier, mostly for debugging purposes, in order to trace the dependency tree and impact lists
  • pkg_install error logs are handled in a nicer way
  • enlisted pkgin’s code to ohloh (click on “i use this” !)
  • plus usual bugfixes Yeah, these were fairly productive holidays :) Of course most of these changes are only available in CVS, see http://pkgin.net for details. Some of them have already made their way to pkgsrc-wip, i try not to insert big changes now, so wip and CVS should be sync’ed quite often.

Needs to be done:

  • make pkgin’s pkgsrc package depend on pkgsrc’s pkg_install
  • reproduce and fix 2 different bugs two users had
  • optimize the dependency loop regarding packages that exists in many versions (i.e. bash)
  • check if pkg_install is to be upgraded and then push it on top of ordered list
  • test Minix 3.2.0 Hope i’ll make it to pkgsrc 2011Q4 !