[gentoo-dev] /proc and portage

[gentoo-dev] /proc and portage

[Thomas Flavel]

Hi,

I had an idea I dimsmissed which I thought I should post anyway, on the off chance that it
might actually get used ;)

I was thinking about how /proc is sometimes used as a bi-directional interface, for example I
can "echo 1>/proc/whatever" to turn on ping flood protection or something similar. I was
wondering how practical it would be to have a similar thing for portage?

If I could say "echo gimp>/proc/portage/install" or "cat /proc/portage/packages" etc then
this would mean that it would be very easy to write front ends for portage, plus with this
minimal interface it would be very nice to use in scripts... I know it would be a massive
kernel module, and probably too much effort to actually produce/maintain but I thought you
should hear the idea... have a think about it please

- Tom

Re: [gentoo-dev] /proc and portage

[Achim Gottinger]

Thomas Flavel wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I had an idea I dimsmissed which I thought I should post anyway, on the off chance that it
> might actually get used ;)
>
> I was thinking about how /proc is sometimes used as a bi-directional interface, for example I
> can "echo 1>/proc/whatever" to turn on ping flood protection or something similar. I was
> wondering how practical it would be to have a similar thing for portage?
>
> If I could say "echo gimp>/proc/portage/install" or "cat /proc/portage/packages" etc then
> this would mean that it would be very easy to write front ends for portage, plus with this
> minimal interface it would be very nice to use in scripts... I know it would be a massive
> kernel module, and probably too much effort to actually produce/maintain but I thought you
> should hear the idea... have a think about it please

Hmm, such a module whould make sense if it contains all the pachage management functions and
the whole /var/db/pkg stuff in a database typothing.
I thought about using SOAP over RPC-XML for an network based package management system.
If this thing could be implemented as a module it would be great I think.

Bye Achim

>
>
> - Tom
> _______________________________________________
> gentoo-dev mailing list
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org
> http://www.gentoo.org/mailman/listinfo/gentoo-dev

Re: [gentoo-dev] /proc and portage

[drobbins]

On Fri, Jan 19, 2001 at 09:47:15AM +0000, Thomas Flavel wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I had an idea I dimsmissed which I thought I should post anyway, on the off chance that it
> might actually get used ;)
> 
> I was thinking about how /proc is sometimes used as a bi-directional interface, for example I
> can "echo 1>/proc/whatever" to turn on ping flood protection or something similar. I was
> wondering how practical it would be to have a similar thing for portage?
> 
> If I could say "echo gimp>/proc/portage/install" or "cat /proc/portage/packages" etc then
> this would mean that it would be very easy to write front ends for portage, plus with this
> minimal interface it would be very nice to use in scripts... I know it would be a massive
> kernel module, and probably too much effort to actually produce/maintain but I thought you
> should hear the idea... have a think about it please

Well, even if we want to implement something like this, it shouldn't go in
/proc, and we don't need a kernel patch.  It's fully possible to do things like
this in user space with directories residing in /var.

We do need some kind of robust portage interface, and something like this could
work.  Specifically, I can think of something like a revamped portage download
manager scanning the /var/lib/portage/download directory for new files that it
should download.  That would also allow the download manager to "double up" on
downloads if more than one file needed to be downloaded at the same time.
However, the actual build process is more linear, and I don't know if there
would be much benefit from this approach besides creating a standardized
interface.  I'll keep it in mind for the next revision of Portage.

Best Regards,

-- 
Daniel Robbins					<drobbins@gentoo.org>
President/CEO					http://www.gentoo.org 
Gentoo Technologies, Inc.