[wpkg-users] [Bug 127] wpkg not checking local wpkg.xml file for installed packages

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http://bugzilla.wpkg.org/show_bug.cgi?id=127





--- Comment #5 from Rainer Meier <r.meier at wpkg.org>  2008-07-28 22:16:05 ---
This has been discussed many times as well. Yes, it is intended behavior of
WPKG to re-install a package to ensure exactly THIS version of the package is
installed which is assigned on the server side.

Usually "normal" users cannot self-upgrade applications. If you allow users to
self-upgrade applications, then you need to change the checks. Unfortunately
(as you already know) Thunderbird/Firefox use their version number within the
uninstall entry. Other programs just use the program name like "Pidgin". So the
package check (from local wpkg.xml) would still yield true if the user
self-upgrades.

In case of Thunderbird you need to remove the uninstall-type check and replace
it by a file check for example. You might check for the existence of
thunderbird.exe where you also can specify that the version has to be "greater
or equal" to a specific value which allows you to allow user upgrades but does
not allow user downgrades.
NOTE: WPKG in this case compares the "File version" flag, not the "Product
version" (which is not available on all binaries.

Alternatively you might just check for the file existence to make sure it is
actually installed.

So finally this is just a matter of how you specify the checks. That's exactly
what the checks are there fore - making sure the system corresponds to a
specified defined state.

If the check is quite complicated you might also consider using the "execute"
check to run a script or even a full program to evaluate if the system
corresponds to a defined value.


It might be true (I will not check) that an old WPKG version just trusts the
contents of wpkg.xml and does not verify on each run if the software is still
installed. However I consider this to be wrong as WPKG needs to detect as well
if some software which is assigned to a machine (and therefore supposed to be
there) has been removed/damaged. So these checks are there to verify the system
state on each single run.


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