Re: [Scrollkeeper-devel] What about the distributions?

[Eric B. <eb...@cy...>]

Ali Abdin wrote:
> 
> What exactly is the proposal? I don't understand how post-install or
> partial databases could fix the problem?

When the packager does "make install" on his build machine, then
scrollkeeper finds no existing database because usually it is building
in
/tmp.

Scrollkeeper has three options in front of a non-existing database:
- exit with an error code. Bade, it means that the build has failed
- do nothing, but then we lose the database information it wanted to
store
- create a new database and store into it the partial information
  (i.e. the information relative to this package's doc files)

Suppose we take the third solution. Now we have a partial database. What
do we
do with it?

- the SPEC file can simply copy it, with a unique name, on the user's
hard disk. But then the browser has to cope with that, perharps with
some help from scrollkeeper

- or scrollkeeper can merge it with the existing big single-file
database on the user's hard disk. Technically simple and efficient, but
has two drawbacks: it obligates the distribution packagers to modify the
SPEC files, and it slows down the post-installation phase.

> Perhaps we can really do a normal install of the OMF file. When
> ScrollKeeper access the metadata it would check that the file "really
> exists" if it does then okay, if it doesn't it gets deleted from the
> database and "not found" is returned.

The RPM system assumes that what you do during a "make install" is
exactly the same whether the end user does it or the packager does it.
The only difference is buildrooting (i.e. / => /tmp)

> > Maybe. I was trying to stress the importance of presenting a unified
> > database rather than lots of partial databases to the help browser (in
> > case Scrollkeeper output would be partial databases). The implementation
> > is not that important at the moment.
> 
> I agree.

The implementation is not important, but the problem that we *might
have* partial databases must be addressed.

-- 
Éric Bischoff  -  Documentation and Localization
Caldera (Deutschland) GmbH - Linux for eBusiness
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