NAME

pkg - package handling pseudo-filesystem

DESCRIPTION

The pkg filesystem is a pseudo-filesystem which provides an interface to package management. Its goal is to provide a unified abstraction over package management which is easy to use, for humans and programs alike. Packages can be listed, installed, deleted, upgraded, introspected, and so forth using just the filesystem.

MOUNT OPTIONS

¯\(°_o)/¯

Files and directories

Files and directories found under the mount path, assumed to be /pkg/.

Root directory

• index/ All packages available on the remote repository.
• installed/ Directory containing all installed packages.
• oudated/ Contains packages which can be upgraded. Currently unspecified.
• sync Executable which synchronises the local package repository with the remote one (think apt-get update or pacman -Sy)
• upgrade Executable which does a full system upgrade (think apt-get upgrade or pacman -Su)

Package files and directories

Files and directories found under both /pkg/index/[name] and /pkg/installed/[name].

• name
• description
• size Note that this is the installed size - how much disk space (in bytes) the package occupies/will occupy.
• dependencies/ A directory of relative symlinks to the package's dependencies. For example, if foobin depends on libfoo, this directory will contain a single symlink pointing to ../../libfoo, thus pointing to /pkg/(index|installed)/libfoo.

Index package files and directories

Files and directories found only under /pkg/index/[name]

• install Executable which installs the package. Flags:
  • -y, --yes - Automatic "yes" to prompts, unless asked a potentially destructive question (like conflict resolution).

Installed package files and directories

Files and directories found only under /pkg/installed/[name]

• uninstall Executable which uninstalls the package.

• files/ A directory of the package's files which it created in the directory tree. Each leaf is a symlink to the actual file. For example:

/pkg/installed/zsh/files:
etc
usr

/pkg/installed/zsh/files/etc:
zsh

/pkg/installed/zsh/files/etc/zsh:
zprofile -> /etc/zsh/zprofile

/pkg/installed/zsh/files/usr:
bin
lib
share

/pkg/installed/zsh/files/usr/bin:
zsh -> /usr/bin/zsh
zsh-5.0.8 -> /usr/bin/zsh-5.0.8

...

TODOs

Root directory

1. dpkg/apt separate between a regular upgrade and a distro-upgrade; which one should /pkg/upgrade run? Is there an equivalent separation in other managers?
2. outdated/ directory: Spec it. Some suggestions below. To decide which is the better way, some research is needed to find out whether upgrading a package is the same as installing the new version, cross package manager. Anyway, suggestions:
   1. Symlinks to /pkg/index
   2. Directory with two symlinks, one to the installed package and the other to the index, with an executable to upgrade.
3. orphans/ directory: Spec it. How should it look like? Should it contain a clean-orphans script? Possible name clashes an iteration problems?

Installed directory

1. Find out if files/ can be implemented across all package managers.

Implementations

• dpkg-fs for Debian (apt/dpkg).
• pacman-fs for Arch (pacman/alpm).
• We'd love to see more!

Based off of an older google doc file before it grew too unwieldy.