Re: [SPAM] Re: Java Runtime Environment plugin for Firefox

On Thursday 21 July 2005 11:55, Jon Roland wrote:
> But would it be so difficult for a packager to write an rpm that would
> invoke Sun's rpm, which presents the license agreement, and would then
> create the symlink in the appropriate directory? That would avoid any legal
> problems and get the job done in a way that could allow smooth upgrades
> without having to make it a research project.

The difficulty arises from a couple of sources.

First, Sun's RPM is wrapped in a non-RPM binary installer that asks you the 
question.  Next, during installation, an RPM's scriptlets are actively 
discouraged from writing anything to stdout or reading anything from stdin.  
RPM itself makes it very difficult to do anything at all interactive during 
package installation.  Further, yum and the other tools currently are not 
written to do anything at all interactive while installing/updating an RPM.  
Since yum in particular is designed to make automatic updates easy, an 
interactive RPM installation really gums up the works.
-- 
Lamar Owen
Director of Information Technology
Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute
1 PARI Drive
Rosman, NC  28772
(828)862-5554
www.pari.edu