HP/DEC/Compaq

RACinst xmas special

it's cozy time again and time for spreading some goodies. this time something for the alpha folks :-)

tru64 is very nice except for one thing: setld. it's extremely slow and any sort of software management turns into a real pita. makes you miss irix' "versions" very much. how nice would it be to have something similar for the good ol 'osf.
well, don't despair, there's hope: RACinst. one of my in-house tools for that very purpose. before going any further here's a look at the included help:

Queries:
========
All search queries are case insensitive and include partial matches.
Use the quick mode first to see whether that's enough already. The
normal search relies on the descriptions provided by the installed
packages so something might be missed. To be on the safe side after a
regular search you can take the base name of the found packages and run
that through quick mode. It might find more and shouldn't be a problem
even on older machines because both modes are very fast. Especially
compared to setld.
The native setld never deletes entries completely so always have a look
at the "Status:" line to see what's actually installed. It should also
be obvious for all results having a size of 0.

Listing:
========
This mode mimics IRIX' "versions" program. Used without a search term
it will display all files of all installed packages; usually piped into
grep. Unlike the query modes this one adds the package name to every line.
Used with a search term it will only show the files installed by the named
package.

Deleting:
=========
Although listed this mode will only delete directories if they're empty
after deleting all other files of the package. Using -f does not change
that but only skips initial checks.
Unlike setld RACinst does actually delete all package files including the
kit files.
You can specify more than one package to delete after -d separated by
spaces.


the main reason for creating RACinst was speed obviously. depending on the machine and used components you can see a speed increase of up to 60x compared to setld.
RACinst is not only very fast but also thorough. for example uninstalling something with setld does not clean things up properly. the package info files are left behind which can cause trouble in quite some situations and also makes listing actually installed software cumbersome.
RACinst does not need any additional libs and doesn't create any files. it has been built on tru64 5.1 and i have no idea whether it works on other versions or not :P

unlike my ebay sniper this one does not contain any private data so it's a free-for-all download. merry christmas :-)
Well done Foetz. Not having any spare time to play with my XP1000's but kudos for a rare piece of utility.
:Crimson: :PI: :Indigo: :O2: :Indy: :Indigo2: :Indigo2IMP:
And here I was hoping for a racist Xmas special.
smit happens.

:Fuel: bigred , 900MHz R16K, 4GB RAM, V12 DCD, 6.5.30
:Indy: indy , 150MHz R4400SC, 256MB RAM, XL24, 6.5.10
:Indigo2IMP: purplehaze , 175MHz R10000, Solid IMPACT
probably posted from Image bruce , Quad 2.5GHz PowerPC 970MP, 16GB RAM, Mac OS X 10.4.11
plus IBM POWER6 p520 * Apple Network Server 500 * RDI PrecisionBook * BeBox * Solbourne S3000 * Commodore 128 * many more...
ClassicHasClass wrote: And here I was hoping for a racist Xmas special.

:P