21 Jun 2001 kwd   » (Apprentice)

Programming
I've finally decided to did in an work on an open source project. Nothing terribly earth-shattering. I had done some thinking about it and currently Slackware is my favorite operating system, not just favorite Linux distribution. So I've decided to start trying to enhance it a little. First thing: the packaging tools. They leave something to be desired. A couple things I want to do:
  • pkgcheck: a script that will generate md5 checksums of all files in a package. Then you can run it again with different parameters and it will give you a list of files in that package.
  • whichpkg: another script. It will be something like you run "whichpkg foo" and it will tell you "file foo is in the following packages:"
  • pkgbackup: using pkgcheck and whichpkg, will back up any files not in a package or that have been modified since the package has been installed.
Why am I doing all this? I want a way to back up all my stuff that isn't in a package so I won't lose anything when I wipe out everything on my box and install the new version of Slackware (whenever it comes out). Believe me, it needs it. Oh yeah, I'm planning on writing all this stuff perl, since I really want to learn perl.

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