OLPC-Update + RPMs WAS:Re: OLPC XO Opera browser as Sugar activity

[david at lang.hm]

On Fri, 27 Jun 2008, Ian Daniher wrote:

> What's the logic for having updates erase all manually installed RPMs?

the updates aren't package based, they are snapshot based.

as a result when you apply an update it alters everything outside of 
/home.

when you have a very standardized system image this can end up being far 
more efficiant to do then a package-based approach (much faster, using 
less bandwidth, less CPU, and less disk space) It can also handle more 
drastic changes as it doesn't care what was in place before.

with the snapshot based approach you can upgrade from a OLPC build to a 
debian build to a ubuntu build using exactly the same steps (and taking 
the same time) as going from OLPC build 1 to OLPC build 1.0.1

David Lang

> A couple of Support-Gangers and myself were talking about ways to remedy
> this.
> We came up with the following:
>
>   - alias "rpm -i $FILE" to "rpm -i $FILE & cp FILE $HOME/.rpms$/FILE" with
>   a script on update that runs "rpm -i $HOME/.rpms/*"
>   - have a script that constantly monitors $HOME/.bash_history for "yum
>   install $PROGRAM" formatted files, then echos the name of $PROGRAM to
>   $HOME/.rpms/installed, but removes it from that list if/when it sees "yum
>   remove $PROGRAM" On update, yum install $(cat $HOME/.rpms/installed) is run.
>   - rpm -qa > $HOME/.rpms/clean could be run on install
>   - rpm -qa > $HOME/.rpms/custom could be run before update
>   - a simple file compare program (python or python-parsed diff output)
>   would be used to generate a file with which yum install $(cat $FILE) could
>   be used
>
> thoughts?
>
>