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  • From: "Eric Sandall" <eric AT sandall.us>
  • To: sm-discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [SM-Discuss] Anyone interested in a mlocate spell?
  • Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:18:22 -0800

Quoting "Ethan Grammatikidis" <eekee57 AT fastmail.fm>:
It may be complicated, but the locate bundled with findutils is not
appropriate for some systems. It shows the existence of files that a
user should not ordinarily be able to see. Mlocate, being derived from
slocate (secure locate), doesn't have this issue. Also I remember
findutils locate being noticably slower at searching the database than
slocate, but I may be going back to when findutils depended on perl.

I'm going to hate myself for saying this, :) but I'd like to modify
findutils, & also take on the mlocate spell if Kevin doesn't want to
persist with it. I'm wondering which is the best way to modify
findutils:

1: findutils optionally depends on mlocate.
2: findutils optionally doesn't install locate.

I prefer #2 as locate isn't strictly needed, there may be no use for it
at all on a very small system. Also it 'feels purer', it doesn't
introduce a dependency only to satisfy expectations. Any comments?

The modification to not install locate is actually quite simple, & goes
in PRE_BUILD rather than INSTALL. All that's needed is a sed command to
remove "locate" from the SUBDIRS setting in the makefile.

I see two options, in the order of my preference:

1. Use PROVIDES
Make a separate location spell that only installs locate from findutils (same SOURCE) and have it provide LOCATE
Have mlocate (and slocate, if we get it) provide LOCATE
Have findutils optionally depend on locate (systems can exist without it :))

2. Modify mlocate (and slocate, et. al.) to not conflict with findutils.
Leave findutils alone.

-sandalle

--
Eric Sandall | Source Mage GNU/Linux Developer
eric AT sandall.us PGP: 0xA8EFDD61 | http://www.sourcemage.org/
http://eric.sandall.us/ | http://counter.li.org/ #196285





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