[RFC] Pre/Post scripts about kiss HOT 4 CLOSED

The reason I haven't added this feature is that I don't think it is needed.

Some packages, such as shells, might need to clean up the system after being uninstalled (removing their entry in /etc/shells).
Adding and removing system users for various services (ssh, http, ftp) also comes to mind.

No packages add entries to existing files and no packages automatically set up groups. I believe these steps should be left to the user and not be automated. Even the post-install script is hardly needed and or used.

In my eyes this is best left up to the user. For example, I use openssh but have no need for the group associated with it and I have multiple shells installed but no use for /etc/shells. There are 200+ packages across the official repositories and community and it's been fine without this feature thus far.

(The post-install script has been used only 6 times (2 of which just display a message to the user)).

Additional Pre/Post Install/Uninstall/Upgrade scripts.
This can be implemented through either separate files, like the current post-install,
or a central scripts or install file with multiple functions.

Were this to be added it would have to be multiple files as the build and post-install scripts are implemented this way to allow them to be language agnostic. I'm also highly against using . script (which is literally eval) to allow for multiple functions.

An extension of this would be also passing the package version strings to functions, for ex. if a package only needs to run the upgrade steps between specific versions (this, and the second approach, are inspired by Arch PKGBUILDs).

Does any piece of software actually need this?

Thanks for opening the issue. 👍

from kiss.

No packages add entries to existing files and no packages automatically set up groups. I believe these steps should be left to the user and not be automated. Even the post-install script is hardly needed and or used.

Fair enough. I was thinking about getting post-uninstall seeing that post-install is already implemented.

Were this to be added it would have to be multiple files as the build and post-install scripts are implemented this way to allow them to be language agnostic. I'm also highly against using . script (which is literally eval) to allow for multiple functions.

I did expect that response :p

Does any piece of software actually need this?

Excluding shells, not yet. A future update might introduce some breakage which could either be solved by the package maintainer or require a manual intervention. Now that I think of it this 'manual intervention' can just as well be a post-install message displayed to the user. Although idk how this fares if the intervention is needed before installing.

from kiss.

In my eyes this is best left up to the user.

For the distro, I'd agree. But the package manager shouldn't be bound to the restriction and make all options available, if and should we intend the kiss package manager to be "universally available" and not made specifically for KISS Linux alone.

I think the current approach works fine (instead of Arch's approach of lumping all of them in an <pkgname>.install script and evaling them).

However, since kiss is... for lack of a better term, "production-ready", we'd need to make it backward-compatible of course, should we add the new feature. So in my view post-install remain as is, however I don't know what else should we add apart of pre-remove. Since I only have a use case for pre-remove (which is deleting the system users), and not pre-install and post-remove.

from kiss.

Added support for pre-remove hooks. With hooks in both install/remove it should be possible to do pretty much anything you'd need to. I don't see a need in post-remove as pre-remove should be fine anyway.

from kiss.