Hello Gianfranco, 14.06.2017 12:46, Gianfranco Costamagna wrote: > Hello, > >> Hello all (especially distribution package maintainers), >> Hans de Goede from Redhat suggested a nice simple solution for stopping >> our Additions and distribution Additions packages from treading on each >> other's feet: a well-known file - >> /usr/sbin/vbox-uninstall-guest-additions - which can be executed to >> uninstall the currently installed Additions, say by executing "dnf >> remove virtualbox-guest-additions" or whatever is appropriate. This is >> implemented in our Additions as of public svn r66387[1] and should be in >> any future 5.1 series Additions too. It would be great if distribution >> packages could also add this. It does not need to remove kernel modules >> which are part of a distribution kernel package as long as they are not >> in a location which clashes with ours (ours live in >> /lib/modules/<version/misc). > >> [1] https://www.virtualbox.org/changeset/66387/vbox/trunk > > so, if I read correctly, before installing our guest-stuff we should check if > that file is available, and blindly call it? > > I'm not sure about the consequences of this, e.g. should I replace that file > at the end, so you do the same when the Debian version is installed? > Should I also check the content of the file, to undestand if that > file is owned by a previous version of the packaged guest- tool? > > I mean, in upgrades that file will be always available, because AFAIU I have > to > provide it to you too. > > I'm not confortable in implementing such a change without having a clear and > common > way of doing it. > > I see lots of corner cases that will probably make things worse if not > correctly implemented. > > I have to admit, I mostly never received bug reports because of such issue, > so I would like > to be really sure about such changes (and I usually update virtualbox to > stable Debian/Ubuntu releases > too, so I have to triple check each change for stability). > > Has any other packager already implemented such a solution?
I am not aware of anyone other than us having implemented this yet. I seem to recall that we discussed this on IRC and came to the conclusion that you could simply refuse to install if that file was found. I wonder whether dpkg will even allow you to install a package which overwrites a file already on the system, assuming you create it too? The last would be very welcome of course. Does that sound reasonable? Regards Michael > thanks, and sorry for the late answer, > > Gianfranco > (Debian and Ubuntu vbox maintainer) > -- Michael Thayer | VirtualBox engineer ORACLE Deutschland B.V. & Co. KG | Werkstr. 24 | D-71384 Weinstadt ORACLE Deutschland B.V. & Co. KG Hauptverwaltung: Riesstraße 25, D-80992 München Registergericht: Amtsgericht München, HRA 95603 Komplementärin: ORACLE Deutschland Verwaltung B.V. Hertogswetering 163/167, 3543 AS Utrecht, Niederlande Handelsregister der Handelskammer Midden-Nederland, Nr. 30143697 Geschäftsführer: Alexander van der Ven, Jan Schultheiss, Val Maher _______________________________________________ vbox-dev mailing list [email protected] https://www.virtualbox.org/mailman/listinfo/vbox-dev
