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[bugzilla-daemon AT bugs.sourcemage.org]

http://bugs.sourcemage.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9045

           Summary: investigate fakeroot and zen-garden as alternatives to
                    installwatch
           Product: Sorcery
           Version: 1.14.x
          Platform: Other
        OS/Version: other
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: Cast
        AssignedTo: sm-sorcery-bugs AT lists.ibiblio.org
        ReportedBy: acedit AT armory.com


fakeroot: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/fakeroot
zen-garden: http://zengarden.foo-projects.org/

fakeroot is used by debian to let un priveledged users pretend to do things as
root to see if they work so you can make packages more easily. that other 
source
distro apparently uses it as their implementation of installwatch, they do 
their
install process with it running, it notes everything that required root priv's
and that would form their set of installed files. fakeroot has a fairly wide
userbase and has been around for a while.

zen-garden is a fork of the unmaintained installwatch we all know. It aims to 
be
faster and has a few extra features, notably, a build chroot feature which 
lets
you install something and it will appear to install in / but instead go to a
directory of your choosing, read operations go first to that other directory,
and if the file isnt there back to the regular root directory. zen-garden does
not appear to be have a significant amount of active maintainence or as
significant a userbase. It is however significantly smaller than fakeroot.

either project would allow us to implement $INSTALL_ROOT transparently (spells
would still need to implement $TRACK_ROOT).

I think both could be used to drop root priv's during INSTALL, although with
zen-garden's chroot build feature we may not need that.

The main pro of zen-garden in my mind is simplicity, the downside is we may 
have
to assume ownership if theres a bug, given that its simple though, im not too
worried about that.

The main pro for fakeroot is we know it can work for source based distros, and
there's a substantial userbase, which means theres likely not going to be many
bugs. The downside for me is that it doesnt feel like the correct tool for the
job, maybe i just dont know enough about it (ive only skimmed the manuals).

One thing to keep in mind for this is an upgrade path, we need to somehow get
all boxes switched over to whichever thing we prefer. How exactly we do this 
and
when we can drop installwatch support i dont know.

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