[RFC] incremental rebase

[Ken Brown]

On 11/16/2014 8:45 AM, Achim Gratz wrote:
>
> As discussed on the main list, here's the incremental autorebase package
> as well as the patched setup.exe to implement perpetual postinstall
> scripts.
>
> $cygwin=http://cygwin.stromeko.net/
> wget $cygwin/noarch/release/_incautorebase/_incautorebase-00006-1.tar.bz2
> wget $cygwin/x86/setup-x86.exe
> wget $cygwin/x86_64/setup-x86_64.exe
>
> As briefly mentioned, the implementation was done to minimize the
> changes to both the infrastructure and the size of the patch to setup.
> This could be implemented differently, for instance based on the
> directory the script is in, rather than its name.  Also, in the same way
> one could look at the name of the script and have certain scripts run
> before or after the others, or use hidden groups (like _PostInstallLast
> and have it actually do what that name suggests).
>
> Another obvious extension would be triggers, i.e. the installation of
> one (or multiple) packages will result in the execution of the triggered
> postinstall script.  This is useful if the same postinstall action can
> be used by many packages (texlive would benefit enormously from that).
> This would require changes to the packaging, upset, setup or all of
> them, of course.
>
> I suggest to start with this and take it from there.

Would it be very hard to allow perpetual postinstall scripts to run either 
before or after all others?  The names could end in _always_before or 
_always_after to indicate which type of script it is.  It seems unnecessarily 
limiting to assume that all perpetual postinstall scripts should run before all 
others.

I could make very good use of this for improving the texlive postinstall process.

Ken