App-Fetchware

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bin/fetchware  view on Meta::CPAN

While sysadmining I liked to install my own compiled from source versions of
popular programs like Apache, MySQL, or Perl without threading. However, doing
so means that you have to manually recompile everytime a new security hole comes
out, which is annoyingly frequent for Apache. So, fetchware was created to bring
the power of package management to source code distributions.

=head1 DESCRIPTION

Fetchware is a package manager for source code distributions. It takes advantage
of the fact that coincidentially I<most> source code distributions follow the same
conventions. Most use FTP and HTTP mirrors. Most use AutoTools or at least just
a few commands that you execute in sequence to configure, build, and install the
program.

Fetchware harnesses these conventions to create a powerful and flexible package
manager for source code distributions. It includes a simple, powerful, and
flexible configuration syntax stored in files called C<Fetchwarefile>s. These
C<Fetchwarefile>s specify the required mandatory configuration options,
C<program>, C<lookup>, C<mirror>, and a method of verifying your program. And
they also specify any additional optional configuration options.

lib/App/Fetchware.pm  view on Meta::CPAN

that specifies one 3rd party mirror. I recommend picking one near your physical
geographical location or at least in your own country or one close by.

C<mirror> can be specified more than once, you you can have more than one
mirror. An example is below.

    mirror 'http://apache.mesi.com.ar//httpd/';
    mirror 'http://apache.osuosl.org//httpd/';
    mirror 'ftp://apache.mirrors.pair.com//httpd/';
    mirror 'http://mirrors.sonic.net/apache//httpd/';
    mirror 'http://apache.mirrors.lucidnetworks.net//';

You can specify as many mirrors as you want to. You could perhaps include all
the mirrors your source code distribution has. And the mirrors are tried in the
order they are specified in your Fetchwarefile.

=item B<6. Specifiy other options>

That's all there is to it unless you need to further customize App::Fetchware's
behavior to modify how your program is installed.

lib/App/Fetchware.pm  view on Meta::CPAN

however, actual regex know how is not really needed just paste verbatim text
between the single quotes C<'>. For example, C<filter 'httpd-2.2';> will cause
fetchware to only download Apache 2.2 instead of the version for Windows or
whatever is in the weird httpd-deps-* package.

=head2 temp_dir '/tmp';

C<temp_dir> tells fetchware where to store fetchware's temporary working
directory that it uses to download, verify, unarchive, build, and install your
software. By default it uses your system temp directory, which is whatever
directory L<File::Temp's> tempdir() decides to use, which is whatever
L<File::Spec>'s tmpdir() decides to use.

=head2 fetchware_db_path '~/.fetchwaredb';

C<fetchware_db_path> tells fetchware to use a different directory other
than its default directory to store the installed fetchware package for the
particular fetchware package that this option is specified in your
Fetchwarefile. Fetchware's default is C</var/log/fetchware> on Unix when run as
root, and something like C</home/[username]/.local/share/Perl/dist/fetchware/>
when run nonroot.

lib/App/Fetchware/Util.pm  view on Meta::CPAN

This magic number is just generated uniquely each time App::Fetchware::Util is
compiled. This number replaces using newline to separate each of the variables
that write_dropprivs_pipe() writes. This way you can include newline, and in
fact anything that does not contain the magic number, which is obviously
suitably unlikely.

=over

=item UNDEF AND EMPTY STRING WARNING 

write_dropprivs_pipe() and read_dropprivs_pipe() both bizarely, accidentily
I<preserve> undef. It's really a function of Perl's C<split> operators
side-effect of returning undef when there is no data to actually return, but the
seperator actually does exist. However, do B<not> depend on this so called
"preservation", because C<''>, empty string, is converted into undef by
read_dropprivs_pipe() preventing you from distinguishing between the two values.

=back

=head3 read_dropprivs_pipe()

    my ($variable1, $variable2, $variable3) = pipe_read_newling($output);

read_dropprivs_pipe() opens the scalar $output, and returns a list of $outputs
parsed out variables split on the $MAGIC_NUMBER, which is randomly generated
during each time you run Fetchware to avoid you every actually using it.

=over

=item UNDEF AND EMPTY STRING WARNING 

write_dropprivs_pipe() and read_dropprivs_pipe() both bizarely, accidentily
I<preserve> undef. It's really a function of Perl's C<split> operators
side-effect of returning undef when there is no data to actually return, but the
seperator actually does exist. However, do B<not> depend on this so called
"preservation", because C<''>, empty string, is converted into undef by
read_dropprivs_pipe() preventing you from distinguishing between the two values.

=back

=head1 MISCELANEOUS UTILTY SUBROUTINES