New PkgBuild version includes 'trackinstall'

gnashley · 11-01-2006, 02:22 AM

I've released a new version of PkgBuild that includes the intial version of 'trackinstall', a replacement for 'checkinstall'.
Several minor fixes have been made and I've reworked the documents some.
get the latest pkgbuild-0.9.6 package or sources here:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/...migo-PkgBuild/

Andriy · 11-01-2006, 07:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gnashley

I've released a new version of PkgBuild that includes the intial version of 'trackinstall', a replacement for 'checkinstall'.
Several minor fixes have been made and I've reworked the documents some.
get the latest pkgbuild-0.9.6 package or sources here:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/...migo-PkgBuild/

Hi! Been using checkinstall for quite some time until I saw your post which made me turn heads

. Checkinstall works all fine for me but I want to ask what's the advantage of using trackinstall instead of checkinstall.

tuxdev · 11-02-2006, 09:46 AM

"trackinstall" is meant to be used close to how "checkinstall" is used, with a few differences. Most importantly is that trackinstall does not depend on user input, a source of many checkinstall packaging errors. Everything trackinstall needs to know that is different than usual is specified up-front. This means that you do not have to retype any packaging tweaks every time you want to run trackinstall slightly different, just use your command history.

I believe this is inspired by my desire to build SVN and CVS version packages. Currently, trackinstall only supports make, but I'm going to change that. Also, a neat feature might be to automagically detect version info for SVN and CVS trees because it isn't obvious from the directory name.

gnashley · 11-02-2006, 10:37 AM

checkinstall will sometimes leave extra files on your system which are not registered in the package.
trackinstall gives you easy access to some features of PkgBuild, including creating smaller packages or deleting selected locale files.
Even better is to use the 'src2pkg' tool which will even write a script for you.

Thanks tuxdev for your excellent explanation and encouragement to go ahead with trackinstall. I had planned for a long time to write it, but your e-mails finally got me going on it. Don't fret about the Makefiles for long -I'll fix that soon. The first version is pretty crude still, but I wanted to get some feedback on the interface options. I don't use SVN or CVS so I'm a bit lost as to what we need to do there. Perhaps you could e-mail me with your suggestions.