Re: Question wrt dual-PEAR

Why not make the debian installer a wrapper to the pear install command? Alot of this seems like it is making a simple problem into a complex one. something like Files: thepackage.tgz postinst: call a small php script that uses pear libs to determine: - is it installed already (in which case just sync debians db) - otherwise - run pear install.. / upgrade dependancies: extract from file somehow (based on the makerpm code?) as for the pear packages in /usr/share/php - they should be phased out really in favoour of /usr/share/pear. Regards Alan On Mon, 2005-01-31 at 23:34 +0100, Pierre Habouzit wrote: > Hi, I'm interested into PEAR packaging for debian (I'm currently near > to be Debian Developper [1]). > > I'm really interested into web apps packaging in debian, and mostly in > php which is the language I use the most for web apps. The thing is > that (IMHO) php, especially PEAR isn't in a very good shape in debian. > > Our major problem is that We (I say *we* because I've talk a bit with > PHP debian maintainer that are /de/ /facto/ PEAR maintainer atm) do not > have found any good way to maintain two branch of PEAR on the same box. > I'll explain : > > * we have PEAR libraries that are in real debian packages that live > in /usr/share/php/ > > * OTOH we would like to have a way to allow a user to install with the > 'pear' command his packages into /usr/local/share/php, without > having to duplicate the whole /usr/share/php tree. > > Perl e.g. handle such situations quite well, because it checks (IIRC -- > i'm not a perl user, not a big fan ;p) if the dependencies exists in > the @INC var (or sth equivalent). The problem with PEAR, is that AFAIK > all is managed from the .registry directory, and it looks like it's a > big stopper to have complementary PEAR trees. > > Note : I don't want to do a symlink from > /usr/local/share/php/.registry to > /usr/share/php/.registry for two reasons : > (1) I'm not sure there isn't absolute path in it. > (2) I want to be possible for the user to have the PEAR::foo package > installed from debian package in /usr/share/php, AND e.g. a devel > or a beta version of the same PEAR::foo package in > /usr/local/share/php which won't work if we share the .registry > > So the big question is ... is there a solution in PEAR we have > missed ? is there a way ? so .. I need some advices :) > > > PS: I'm not subscribed to the list, so *please* Cc: me. > > > [1] : http://nm.debian.org/nmlist.php#waiting -- Alan Knowles <alan@akbkhome.com>