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List:       crux
Subject:    prt-get ready for public testing
From:       Johannes Winkelmann <jw () tks6 ! net>
Date:       2002-07-02 14:22:09
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Hello everyone,

Those reading some of the recent postings on this list probably heard
about prt-get already. It is a (command line) front end to pkgmk and
pkgadd which can simplify some tasks when installing or updating 
packages from the crux ports tree.

I made a web page with a better description plus an extensive example
page, which should give you a good idea what prt-get is and whether
you need/want/like it or not: 
URL1: http://www.hta-bi.bfh.ch/~winkj/software_prt-get.html
URL2: http://www.hta-bi.bfh.ch/~winkj/software_prt-get_by_example.html

Now I decided it's time to release prt-get to the public. There's a man
page now, and it's using autoconf/automake. The more, there's a no-op
test mode. I called the current version 0.3.0pre1, and I'll try to fix
any issues remaining during the next days, so there should be a very
stable 0.3.0 release this or the next week (depending on the feedback I
get of course).

A note on its stablity: I'm using it as my main installation tool for
about a week now, without any problems. Remember that prt-get doesn't
alter your system itself, it only calls pkgmk and pkgadd. So any
possible "harm" comes from incorrect packages. Of course there might be
cases I haven't encountered yet, so please test and tell me whether it
works and whether you like it or not. Most problems I have are related
to footprint missmatches, which can be quite annoying, e.g. kdebase
creates menu items for some non-kde applications like gimp etc, which 
means that you get a footprint missmatch there if your system is not
100% the same as the system where the kdebase footprint was generated. 
As pkgmk has no automatic footprint updating (which is a good thing!),
prt-get will fail in this case as well, telling you which packages had
already been installed, and which packages failed to build.

Port download: 
URL3: http://www.hta-bi.bfh.ch/~winkj/files/crux/prt-get.prt.tar.gz

Pure package: 
URL4: http://www.hta-bi.bfh.ch/~winkj/files/crux/prt-get-0.3.0pre1.tar.gz

Only requires pkgmk and pkgadd to be installed in order to work
correctly.

some features:
- installing or updating a list of packages
- install/update from any directory, without changing to the port's
  directory
- search the ports tree/list information from Pkgfiles:
  - search for name
  - search in name and descriptions for substring
  - list dependencies listed in the package files 
  
using the dependency listing and the 'install list of ports' feature,
one can install those package clusters which were mentioned previously.
Or you can just create a text file with packages in the correct order,
and use this as an input source for prt-get to install a suite of
packages (crux-kde, crux-gnome ...).

For more information, please have a look at the "prt-get by example" web
page mentioned above (URL2), where examples for 'installing package with
dependencies' as well as a lot more is shown.


I'm currently implementing a cache feature, which will be incorporated
after the 0.3.0 release, but I'd like to get some feedback on the
current version first, so I'd really appreciate your opinions/comments.

Thanks, 
regards, Johannes
-- 
Johannes Winkelmann                 mailto:jw@tks6.net
Trondheim, Norway                   http://jw.tks6.net

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