On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 12:25 PM, D G Teed <donald.t...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 11:33 AM, Darac Marjal > <mailingl...@darac.org.uk>wrote: > >> On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 11:24:38AM -0300, D G Teed wrote: >> > A user would like the latest and greatest zsh and we have >> > a deb package for it. For security purposes I want to >> > keep the slightly older version of zsh obtained and maintained >> > from debian packages as the system default zsh. >> > >> > I'm willing to install the later version of zsh in an alternate >> directory, >> > say under their home or in /usr/local for the one user. >> > >> > I thought perhaps dpkg --root /usr/local/zsh with a copy of >> > /var/lib/dpkg placed under /usr/local/zsh would do the trick, >> > but it isn't happy as some part of this still believes we >> > are working on the main system dpkg path: >> > >> [cut: errors] >> > >> > Building from source would work too, but typically has care and feeding >> steps >> > just to get all the deps in line. >> > >> > What is the best way to use a deb package and not have it as part >> > of the system's knowledge of installed packages? It is OK if at runtime >> > zsh has dependancy on system libs. >> >> Well, I can see this, at least, being a problem. What if, for example, >> the latest version of zsh depends on a version of a system library >> that's incompatible with your current libraries (i.e. an ABI change)? >> > > We would probably keep updating the zsh installed in the alternate root. > I just want to have the system default zsh updated in the usual manner > and rest assured that the system default is patched often enough. > > The alternate zsh can be updated, perhaps by the user, whenever they > want a later and greater version of zsh. (Assuming I can get this > working from dpkg, otherwise we'll be building from tarball - but > I was hoping Debian wouldn't force me into that). > Searching more for how dpkg can handle something like a relocate, it appears this is not an option. The solution for me was to download the tarball, configure, make and make install, which placed an alternate version of zsh under /usr/local as desired. Not many dependencies so it wasn't as painful as some packages to install this way.
