Richard Cohen writes:
> My feeling is that, although the ipkg stuff is really nice, it relies too
> much on a live Internet connection. I'm at work right now, on a heavily
> NISed, heavily firewalled network, and I only got an always-on 'net
> connection at home last week. Maybe a little more checking to see if there
> is a network available before trying to go out on it?
Richard,
What would you recommend changing in ipkg? Currently, the following
ipkg commands work completely without any network connection:
install <file.ipk> Install package <file.ipk>
remove <pkg> Remove package <pkg>
list List available packages and descriptions
files <pkg> List all files belonging to <pkg>
search <file> Search for a packaging providing <file>
info [<pkg>] [<field>] Display all/some info fields for <pkg> or all
status [pkg] [<field>] Display all/some status fields for <pkg> or all
depends <pkg> Print uninstalled package dependencies for <pkg>
The only commands that assume a network connection are those that
actually interact with the network. The "ipkg update" command will
download a new list of available packages, while "ipkg install <pkg>"
will download and install a package. The "ipkg upgrade" command also
depends on the network since it will invoke "ipkg install <pkg>"
internally.
So what network dependence could be reduced? Of course, some users
might not ever set up a network connection, and in that case the
task-familiar-complete image provides a reasonable collection of
packages for an initial installation.
It's probably very likely that ipkg could benefit from some better
failure modes when networking is not available. Suggestions are
welcome for tests that could be performed and error cases that are
currently not handled well.
-Carl
Received on Tue May 15 09:21:15 2001
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Tue May 04 2004 - 09:38:24 EDT