On Thu, 21 Aug 2003, Paul Mison wrote:
> On 20/08/2003 at 23:34 -0400, Tara L Andrews wrote:
> >
> >Even then, at least in the case of OS X, one can be bitten. I found an
> >Installer package for perl 5.8 somewhere on the Net; it messed up my
> >system perl pretty badly.
>
> Well, that's partly because Mac OS X doesn't really have a native
> packaging system. Sure, there're downloadable .pkg installers, but since
> there's no way of telling which package put a file somewhere, or which
> version of the package did so, or what the version of the file is, or to
> see a list of the packages [0] nor to remove a package [1], I'm standing
> by the 'not really' part of that statement.
Really?
% lsbom /Library/Receipts/Safari.pkg/Contents/Archive.bom | head
. 41775 0/80
./Applications 40775 0/80
./Applications/Safari.app 40775 0/80
./Applications/Safari.app/Contents 40775 0/80
./Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info.plist 100664 0/80 9486 3265824559
./Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS 40775 0/80
./Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/Safari 100775 0/80 761132 3156916282
./Applications/Safari.app/Contents/PkgInfo 100664 0/80 8 2190113219
./Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Resources 40775 0/80
./Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Resources/Activity_Stop.tif 100664 0/80 374
1307578447
I know of know pointy-clicky wrappers around the `lsbom` command -- or
more accurately, at the .bom databases inside the .pkg packages -- but
it seems like there is enough information available to, say, write a
tool that could make necessary repairs if files went missing, had their
ownership or permissions changed around, or if symlink targets moved.
--
Chris Devers [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://devers.homeip.net:8080/resume/
hype, n.
Any document headed "For immediate release."
-- from _The Computer Contradictionary_, Stan Kelly-Bootle, 1995
