So i finally gave into peer pressure and start my self a new shiny blog.
So I haven't worked on Lunar-Linux for ages, and I felt like doing something productive so I figured I'd do something productive. I'm not nececesarly working stuff for lunar per say. I'm working to create tools to scratch an itch.
So right now I'm hacking on installwatch, I want to add some code to support installing into a different root then /. A lot of non autotoolized packages don't support the DESTDIR variable in their Makefiles or are broken. Sounds kinda tricky, and it is because quite a few apps read files, or modify files during the make install stage The modify part right now is not a huge concern for me right now because installwatch has a backup directory. The reading of a file on disk is a bigger issue. I think i'll be somewhat easy to implement it, check if file exists in the fake root; if not then copy that file from / to the fake root, and then allow the app to work on it. Or combine the backup and real logic. I also thought about using ptrace to trap syscalls to get around some of the install watch weakness (setuid or statically linked binaries), but that would be a big pain in the ass and non portable, so i abandoned this for now.