Date: Tue, 11 Mar 1997 23:50:14 -0500 (EST)
From: "Mike A. Harris" <mharris AT blackwidow DOT saultc DOT on DOT ca>
Reply-To: "Mike A. Harris" <mharris AT blackwidow DOT saultc DOT on DOT ca>
To: evand AT scn DOT org
cc: OpenDOS Mailing List <opendos AT mail DOT tacoma DOT net>
Subject: Re: [opendos] BAD Filesystems
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On Tue, 11 Mar 1997, Evan Dickinson wrote:

> On Tue, 11 Mar 1997 jdashiel AT eagle1 DOT eaglenet DOT com wrote:
> 
> > The shared libraries problem is a rather trivial relational data base
> > problem.
> > two data bases would reside in /usr/apps,
> > libsdat and apps.dat.
> > The field structure for libs.dat is sequential and contains:
> > record number (key),
> > directory path,
> > library name,
> > apps count.
> > 
> > apps.dat contains:
> > app name,
> > variable number of fields containing lib names record numbers.
> > 
> > When an application is installed, a check is done for what shared libs it
> > uses.
> > If any shared libs are used, the app count field is incremented by 1.
> > The application name is stored along with each of the record numbers for
> > each shared lib.
> > If more than 1 shared lib is used by an application,
> > each associated app count is incremented by 1.
> > 
> > When an uninstall happens,
> > each associated app count number is decremented by 1.
> > Only when a shared lib has an app count of zero can it be removed from
> > the disk safely.  If a shared lib is needed and not on the disk,
> > installation
> > programs will have to prompt the user for the system disk that has the
> > lib on it and copy that lib into the directory.
> > awk or perl could probably handle a data base application like this one.
> > My normal method is to use dBase for them, but that's how I earned my
> > money for the navy the past few years.
> 
> This sounds good, but a stand-alone program that can update these files
> would help.  Something that would look for programs that were deleted but
> not removed from the database, and delete their entries.  Mabey it could
> even act as a universal uninstaller.  There'll still be allot of people
> who use del *.* to remove programs, and most DOS programs don't have
> uninstall routines.

Perhaps a port of "file, locate, update, binstat, etc." and other
utilities could simplify this.
 

Mike A. Harris        |             http://blackwidow.saultc.on.ca/~mharris
Computer Consultant   |                  Coming soon: dynamic-IP-freedom...
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