Package Management TODO

• packagefs:
  • Prepare for use in a chroot environment. Currently it resolves the package directory path in the kernel I/O context. This is only a problem for packagefs mount after chroot.
  • Support packages being copied to the packages directory. Currently only moving works.
  • Solve node removal issues. A currently executing program should not crash and burn when its package is removed.
  • Provide information about active packages to the tools that need it (e.g. the package solver).
  • Implement query support.
  • If necessary, add a caching mechanism to speed up mounting it.

• Build system:
  • Before creating packages (e.g. the user guide), all files must be identified, since packagefs is read-only.
  • Make the update feature of the build system usable again. Currently for anything in the haiku.hpkg package the whole package has to be rebuilt, which takes a rather long time.

• Package building:
  • Work on tools to build Haiku packages in a clean chroot environment.
  • Define packaging guidelines and create a tool to check packages those.
  • Adjust build "recipes" for HaikuPorts packages as needed and build the packages.

• Package kit/manager:
  • Implement the package solver (as Oliver proposed based on libsatsolver).
  • Extend the package kit and the (CLI) package manager to support adding, removing, and updating packages. That probably also involves work on a server-side (i.e. repository) part.
  • Implement a GUI package manager.

• Miscellaneous:
  • Modify Expander to use a directory instead of the expander.rules file. This way a package (like xz-utils or p7zip) can contribute a single file with the rules for its tools.