smart patch

[Hamish Robertson]

Hey Gustavo,
My name is hamish robertson and I'm trying to put together a distro
for use in Laos. I'm not sure if you read my email on the mailing list
but we really need a way to install programs in linux without the
internet. People here will take their USB stick to an internet cafe,
load the program on their memory stick and then try and install it on
their computer 30 kilometers away. We all know what's going to happen
when they try that with rpm files. :)

So I was wondering, how hard would it be to add a rpm freeze function
to a package manager? I.e Say, I want to install gimp. The package
manager will find the package and all the dependancies, hell if they
use yours it will even find the right ones :) , then cache them on the
disk then install them in the right order. What I need is something
that will archive all the rpms and the install script into one archive
without installing it. This archive (super rpm>?) could be clicked on
later and the package manager would open it automatically and continue
installing the packages. It would check if there is an internet
connection and check the install on the new machine in case the
packages in the archive already exist or are too old.
If the super rpm was created with a base install of the distro, it
would install on someone else's computer providing they had the same
distro....right?

I've looked at autopackage and zero click and they're all great but
you still need to tap into the source code to re-package the files -
even then, there's no guarantees with the dependancies. My way, would
allow us to create hundres of installable programs very quickly and
more importantly, with very little knowledge (the scarcest commodity
over here).

Is my idea plausible? Is it worth a go? How long would it take you to
incorporate something like that into your package manager. How long
would it take me to learn to do it myself (never programmed anything
before)?

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated here. This country and
the government here is ready to adopt linux. But it can't happen with
linux's current depandance on the internet (which is really patchy
here).

Anyway, sorry to rant

Hamish.



On 01/08/07, Gustavo Niemeyer <gustavo at niemeyer.net> wrote:
> Hello Peter,
>
> I was on holiday last week, that's why I didn't get to your mail
> earlier.  Apologies.
>
>
> > Attached please find a patch that does the following:
> > - add a "checksig" configuration option which is True by default, and
> > when set to False, rpm transaction does not check signatures.
>
> Should this really be supported in Smart, considering that the option
> may be setup in rpm itself?
>
>
> > - fix repackaging. Apparently I am not the only one that was missing it,
> > there are people in the mailing list archives looking for it too.
>
> Nice!  I'll try to get that integrated in Smart for the next release.
>
> It'd be good to have some tests for that, but I recognize that it may
> be a bit tricky to test this interaction with rpm.
>
>
> > Let me also thank you for creating an application like this. I use it on
> (...)
>
> I'm happy to see that it's being useful for you.
>
> --
> Gustavo Niemeyer
> http://niemeyer.net
>