[HECnet] Announcing RPM, a software packet manager for RSX-11M-PLUS

[Johnny Billquist]

Since I'm on a roll today, I figure I should announce the availability 
of a new tool for RSX, which I think most hobbyists will find rather useful.

RPM is a packet manager for RSX (it has nothing to do with the Red Hat 
Packet Manager, except the name).

Over the years, I have found it becoming an ever growing hassle to 
manually download, build and install all the different tools that I am 
used to have on different systems. Not to mention the headaches when 
trying to help others and providing software for them as well.

RPM is an attempt at automating this, and making more software available 
for all people with a small effort. I hope it will also help in getting 
more people on to the actual latest version of various tools. 
Historically, much software like this was distributed through DECUS, and 
the various symposium tapes tried to distribute updates, but it was a 
very fragmented world, where parallel development often happened, based 
on different versions. RPM will now allow people to see what is the 
actual latest version around, and if they want to work on something, 
they can do that based on this.

RPM is by no means perfect, and in fact are missing a whole bunch of 
things, but it is now at a stage where it is actually usable and useful, 
so therefore I'm doing this announcement now.

RPM is essentially a tool to track what software is available and what 
software is installed. It can install and remove software, and it can 
update it to new versions when new versions become available.
It can also be involved as a part of the boot process to automatically 
install any tasks that are part of installed packages.
It can fetch information both over DECnet and TCP/IP, and is written in 
IND, and uses cleartext configuration and status files, and packages are 
universal libraries.

Feel free to contact me about any issues, problems, wishes, or whatever. 
I can't guarantee that anything gets down, but there is always a bigger 
chance if I know about it. The software is also freely available, and 
contributions from others are also very welcome.

So, with that presentation done, here are the practical details:

To use RPM, you need to fetch one file to your machine:
RPM.PKG.

It can be found at:
HECnet:  MIM::LB:[RPM]RPM.PKG
Inetnet: ftp://rpm@mim.update.uu.se/rpm.pkg

Once you have downloaded that file, you need to extract two files, using 
the following commands:
LBR RPM=RPM.PKG/EX:RPM
LBR CONFIG=RPM.PKG/EX:CONFIG

After that, edit CONFIG.CMD using your favorite editor. The file should 
contain enough explanation and examples for what you need to setup.

After you've done that editing, give the command:

@RPM FETCH

this will setup the list of what packages are available.
After that, you can do

@RPM LIST

to show what packages there are.
It's not necessary, but I would recommend the next thing is:

@RPM INSTALL RPM

this moves the RPM package manager itself under control of RPM, so that 
you automatically get new improvements installed when they are available.

Of course, you can then download packages (@RPM FETCH pkg), get 
information about packages (@RPM INFO pkg), install packages (@RPM 
INSTALL pkg), or just update them (@RPM UPDATE pkg).

However, apart from the INSTALL option, to just install those packages 
you really would like to have, the most used option will probably be 
"ALL", which does a fetch of the latest package list, and then updates 
any packages that should be updated. You could in fact just place that 
in a batch file to be run once in a while, and have your software 
updated all the time without having to think about it.

Or else, just once in a while do a

@RPM FETCH
@RPM LIST

to see which packages have new updates available, and then you can just 
update the ones you want to.

Finally, it is possible to run without giving any option/command at all, 
in which case RPM goes into interactive mode, with a menu showing what 
you can do.
It is also possible to run from the command line with multiple commands. 
Each command should be separated from the others using "+" in that case.

For example:

@RPM FETCH+LIST


As for what packages are available - I have started making some 
available that I have been using and working on for many years. I have 
plenty more software that I will make available. If anyone else have 
software they would like to make available, I can provide some quick 
information on how you create your own packages as well, and I can also 
host packages from other people at Mim.
Also, for the time being, I have mostly focused on binary packages with 
executables. I can certainly see that eventually I would also do 
packages for the sources of things. It's mostly a case of priorities. 
Even though creating a package is now a fairly easy task, it do grow 
with the number of files and stuff you want to put in there. If anyone 
wants sources for some specific software for which I have made a 
package, the sources are also on Mim, and are usually readable by 
anyone. Ask me if you have any questions, and for the most part, all of 
the software is freely available in sources as well.

Also, the binaries are built for RSX-11M-PLUS. While some might work on 
11M as well, I have not tried this, nor am I going to try and handle it. 
There could also be an issue with some software if installed on older 
versions of RSX-11M-PLUS (before V4.0). I would think it should mostly 
work, but will not make any guarantees about that either. (If anyone 
really is running such old versions, they should update to a newer 
version of RSX instead).

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol