Automated Package Management for IRIX?

wowbagger asks: "We've all heard of the various apt-get packages for Mac OS X (and more power to them!), but does anybody know of a similar effort for Irix? Yes, SGI has their freeware distribution of GNU and other utilities, but there is as far as I've seen no good way to automatically update - you just have to go to the SGI open source server (when it is available) and try to find something new. Has anyone set up a apt/gentoo/redcarpet system to automate this process"

Comments

It's quiet.

[presearch]

An IRIX post. The slience is deafening.

Re:It's quiet.

[Tumbleweed]

Yeah, but it's a reverent silence.

Like when you're in a tomb. :)

sgi's apt-get .01

[slithytove]

I have one sgi with 6.5.13 and I installed a few of the freeware collection packages before I wondered this same thing. There is a a script linked to off the faq at freeware.sgi.com - I'm pretty sure thats where it is, but its been a little while and I'm not going to go find it for you because I had a bad experience with it.
First of all there were a couple minor things wrong with it that I can't even remember, but I fixed them- they were pretty obvious. Then I installed everything I wanted. Most of it worked great, but I had a few problems and figured a reboot might help. Now after logging in the menubar loads but nothing else- really weird state like nothing I've seen in linux. I'm going to do a re-install though soon and I'll be happy if someone has a better answer than this:)
And it is possible that it was a peculiarity of my system that caused it, but I cant think what- just be careful.

Irix package management

[termos]

IIRC there is something called swmgr for IRIX, if that's not what you mentioned in the "SGI open source server" thing. At least it should handle dependencies, and I also found some old slashdot comment on the subject available here.
Hope this can help.

Re:Irix package management

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

./configure

Works every time? Not more than half...

There is a long-standing link from the freeware pages at SGI which states:

GNU autoconf generates configure scripts that assume that if a library exists, it should be used. This is incorrect on IRIX, which keeps some old libraries around just for the sake of backward compatibility with very old programs. This alone breaks most of the GNU utilities on IRIX. To prevent this from happening, simply force GNU configure to explicitly ignore 'libsocket', 'libnsl', 'libgen' and 'libsun'. All these interfaces have their up-to-date entries in the standard C library libc.so on IRIX 6.x.

For example, when calling GNU configure you should use something like:

ac_cv_lib_gen_getmntent=no \
ac_cv_lib_sun=no \
ac_cv_lib_sun_getpwnam=no \
ac_cv_lib_sun_getmntent=no \
ac_cv_lib_sun_yp_match=no \
ac_cv_lib_socket=no \
ac_cv_lib_socket_main=no \
configure ...
Note that this is just an example. Make sure to look at your config.cache (or equivalent) file after configuration, and inspect it for any suspicious ac_cv_lib... entries that match one of the libraries mentioned above and force them to no (or equivalent).

This is a fair warning, and the devil is in the details...

something more automated than swmgr?

[irix]

You can point swmgr (and inst too - maybe?) at a directory containing tardists over HTTP. It will sort out the dependencies and install/update everything you want.

It isn't quite apt-get or up2date interms of automation, but it gets the job done. I'm not aware of anything that automates swmgr/inst so that it will automatically notify you of updates. However, SGI releases Freeware on a cycle, so you should know about when to update your installed packages.

dpackage

[Sevn]

I can remember at Mindspring years ago we installed
the dpackage system on FreeBSD and on Digital
Unix 4.0x. I don't recall it being very hard
to get the system up and running. Before someone
jumps my shit about ports being significantly
better, I agree. The reason we went with dpackage
was because we did a lot of custom in house
code, and dpackages are very easy to put together.
This meant that the developers had to hand the
admins dpackages. If for any reason the install
didn't work or the package was moofed, it got sent
back until it did work. It made developing a project
life cycle much easier.

NetBSD pkgsrc

[sethgecko]

Supports

Darwin 6.6/powerpc
Debian Linux/i386
FreeBSD 3.5/i386
FreeBSD 5.1/i386
IRIX 6.5/mips
IRIX64 6.5/mips
OpenBSD 3.2/i386
Slackware 8.1/i386
Solaris 8/sparc
Solaris 9/sparc
Solaris 9/i386

http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/software/pac ka ges.html.

Of course, you have to compile the packages using the framework they provide, but where will you find 3000 precompiled Irix binaries anyway?

inst

[rf0]

Not automatic but the best way might be similar to the following as it should avoid dependancies

download all the iso images and save them locally to say /dist/disk[1234]. You can also script this. Look on http://techpubs.sgi.com but basically

inst -f /dist/disk1 -f /dist/disk2 -f /dist/disk3 -f /dist/disk4
inst upgrade
conf (there shouldn't be any conflicts as you are updating everything)
go

come back in 10 minutes

HTH

Rgds

Rus

Already done for you

[terrencefw]

inst -f http://freeware.sgi.com/Inst

Then do keep *, install updated, go

Inst can fetch stuff over http so what's the problem?

*ROFL*

[Outland Traveller]

I can't believe I just saw someone say "inst" and "avoid dependancies" in the same sentence!

Gotta love SGI's inst packages.. Never the same upgrade twice, circular dependencies, and a 10 minute per install cleanup routine.

The only thing it's good for is job security.