Re: mingw-get installer and available MSYS packages.

On 9/5/2010 8:57 PM, Chris Johns wrote:
> On 6/09/10 10:11 AM, Charles Wilson wrote:
>> We're working on it, but it's slow going.
> 
> Fantastic and please do not take my confusion as being critical. I am 
> happy to see these packages appearing. Well done to all involved.
> 
>> As it happens, I just
>> published the manifests for perl and its prerequisites about an hour
>> ago.
> 
> The update worked and I have it. Nice.

Good.

>> Once they have propagated to all the sf mirrors, you should be
>> able to do the following:
>>
>>     mingw-get update
> 
> Does a list of commands for mingw-get exist ? I tried:

Unfortunately, no.  There is no built-in help (or any other option
parsing, for that matter, yet).  Right now, the only docu is in
<install>/share/doc/mingw-get/README.

IMO, the highest priority new "features" are:

  1. command line option parsing, esp. --help/-h/-?
  2. 'mingw-get uninstall a-package-specification'
  3. 'mingw-get upgrade a-package-specification' (this is just
     "uninstall what I have and install the latest, if newer; otherwise
     do nothing" so it's almost free once #2 is implemented.
  4. rpm-like query functions:
      -q -l <package-spec>   (list files in this installed package)
      -q -i <package-spec>   (tell me about this package )
      -q <package-spec>      (tell me whether this package is
                              installed, and what version it is)
      -q -a                  (list all of the packages I have installed)
     Now, we don't HAVE to follow the rather cryptic rpm command line
     interface, but I figure most folks are familiar enough with rpm
     that it's real clear what functionality I'm talking about.
  5. manifest query functions:
       list all the packages (and their versions) I *could* install

Patches Gratefully Considered...

>     mingw-get help
> 
> plus some other variations and I got a fatal error which seems to erase 
> the mingw-get executable. Is this a known issue ?

Well, the executable didn't get erased. It just got renamed (and it is a
known issue -- I guess I need to open a tracker item):

mingw-gets last-rites bug [Was: Re: New MinGW and MSYS Installer]
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.mingw.user/34074

>>     mingw-get install msys-perl-bin
> 
> Ah ok so I can get just the binary part. I saw the lic sub-packages for 
> licenses. I did not know you could distribute the licenses separate from 
> binary images for some licenses [2].

The idea is that each of the various subcomponents -- dll packages, bin
packages, devel packages -- are ALL covered by the same license. Rather
than ship the license multiple times with each subcomponent (which would
really complicate our installed-file database), we put the relevant
files into a -lic component instead.

All of the manifests have two special markers, for every package:

      <licence tarname="libarchive-%-msys-%-lic.tar" />
      <source tarname="libarchive-%-msys-%-src.tar" />

using these -- eventually -- mingw-get should be able to figure out what
tarball contains the license file associated with what component (and
no, it can't just figure it out from the package name; for instance, the

   <package name="msys-bsdtar" ...>
   </package>

does NOT have a license file in "bsdtar-*-msys-*-lic.tar" -- because
"bsdtar" is actually built from the libarchive source tarball:

   <package name="msys-bsdtar" ...>
      <licence tarname="libarchive-%-msys-%-lic.tar" />
      <source tarname="libarchive-%-msys-%-src.tar" />
      <component class="bin">
        <release tarname="bsdtar-2.8.3-1-msys-1.0.13-bin.tar.lzma" >
          <requires eq="msys-libarchive-%-msys-%-dll-2.tar" />
        </release>
      </component>
   </package>

IMO, eventually mingw-get will *automatically* and *always* install the
associated -lic package for everything it installs.  But it doesn't do
that yet.

> [2] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhyMustIInclude

We provide the license in downloadable form (specifically in EXACTLY the
same form that every other component of the package is provided in,
installable by our mingw-get installer -- it's not like we require the
end user to go troll thru the -src package or something).  We just don't
(yet) *force* the user to download it.  Eventually, we probably will...

--
Chuck

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