I have completed a CLFS build, and have really enjoyed configuring to my hearts content. I have added Roy Marples OpenRC 0.5.0, and have added the zen-sources kernel among other things. This has been a great learning experience & enjoyable.

Now I am tasked with getting a proper package management system. I have seen people use dpkg & rpm's and paco. Since I will not be running a X environment paco is out of the question, I need a good tool. So I installed Arch's pacman.static, and added the mirrorlists, and pacman.conf file. I now can successfully download packages with pacman. But.... I have a problem with its dependency check. I need to trick pacman into thinking I have the core, utils, headers and build utils installed. Note this is a barebones CLFS install at the moment, meaning only the toolchain, coreutils and devices are installed. I do have dhcp working and is active.

So, I was thinking about using ARCH's ABS to download the PKGBUILDS, and manually install the compiled packages. This gives me the freedom to edit the PKGBUILD to suit my standard FHS layout and any needed dependences. Before I can get pacman.static working, I need to know where pacman stores its db, so I can edit it manually to override any unwanted package downloads. Something like Gentoo's world file.

I am not familiar with Slackware, but I do know they have a similar system for compiling and installing packages. So... are there any tutorials (trust me I've expended google) that can assist me in installing Slackware like system in my CLFS... as an alternative to the Arch approach...? I am very new with Slackware, so I am wondering if this is possible.


EDIT: An example of pacman.static output

Did you check the Package Management section of the CBLFS Wiki --> http://cblfs.cross-lfs.org/index.php/Main_Page. There are several package managers there including Slackware's Pkgtools and one created explicitly for CLFS systems.

Your completely right... I was over thinking this issue... I have installed pkgtools ..

I have a 64bit setup ... does Slackware64 use a standard FHS layout..? is the library folder named /lib or /lib64 ...? I need to know if I need to setup a symbolic link, and if it will work.

BTW, does Slackware have any rsync servers that I can sync with, maybe a db with links to download a package or sets. Or is it a manual download per package..? Or do I have to build a wget list to download multiple packages..?

Total noob.. to the Slackware way of package management. Thx

Don't know, I use PackManUtil on my CLFS boxes.

But, paco doesn't need a gui. Just do './configure --disable-gpaco'.

I actually was looking @ PackManUtil on the CBLFS site before I posted and noticed your the maintainer, and a CBLFS contributor. I assume that you use PackManUtil after the toolchain is built and bootstrapped. Does it catalog all libs, and installed sources after I have completed the build so to avoid any file collision? I am a complete novice with how CLFS philosophy works, and any package tool variant. Not ignorant though.

I have no problem with installing source, but using symlinks and using InstallWatch seemed cumbersome. So I'll look more closely at PackManUtil. Just trying to get my head around Package management with CLFS in Pure64.

On a side note, I would like to contribute to the CBLFS community and write a tutorial for implementing OpenRC 0.5.0, I have written a small patch for CLFS pure64. And have confirmed it with Roy Marples. How would I go about this..? I am working on a 64bit multilib setup for testing and implementing OPenRC 0.5.0, so far its been much better then any BSD, or the bundled CLFS bootscripts package I've used.

It seems I overlooked that... It was late and I was tired ...

Actually, I already had build scripts for CLFS when I started writing PackManUtil so I don't start using PackManUtil until after I've completed CLFS. Someday, if someone requests, I might work out the details of using PackManUtil starting with chapter 10.

It can use paco to track installation of *all* files. Unfortunately, paco doesn't use a fakeroot AFAIK, so you have to install system-wide. The other option is to use a fakeroot, create a tarball of the installed files, and then unpack the tarball system-wide. This is the preferred method and when writing the build scripts for a package, we make sure the installed files won't clobber anything. If so, we account for those clobbers.

You can add the build instructions to the CBLFS wiki. If there is anything more in depth than that, you can write a CLFS hint at http://hints.cross-lfs.org/index.php/Main_Page.