Difference: PsmPackageSystem (9 vs. 10)

Upgrading the Operating System

When the department moves from one version of the OS to another (eg SuSE 11.3 to SuSE 11.4) the older packages will no longer be available. To initialise the package system under the new OS, follow these steps:

• create directory $USERPKGARCH if it does not already exist (ensure group RW permissions)
• create directory $USERPKGARCH/lib
• install each package as before

Note that as of May 2011, helpdesk reports that the "use" script is broken (and has been for the past few years). It does not properly execute the "enable" and "disable" scripts mentioned on the Imager local resources webpage. This makes it difficult to install libraries and then compile against them, because the use script does not properly set various environment variables (CMAKE_LIBRARY_PATH, LIBRARY_PATH, PKG_CONFIG_PATH, PYTHON_PATH etc). One way to work around this is to have a $USERPKGARCH/lib and a $USERPKGROOT/include directory, point your various environment variables to those paths in your .bash_profile file, and then symlink each package's libraries and headers into those directories upon package installation. This has worked so far under SuSE 11.1 ... 11.3 but it does make uninstalling/upgrading packages tricky, and there is a potential for name conflict. An alternative would be to write an enable script for each package then then do "use whizzy; whizzy_enable" each time you want to use the package.