[vbox-dev] Guest Additions, co-existence of distribution and upstream versions

[Michael Thayer]

Dear All (especially maintainers of distributions Additions packages),

I have been thinking again about our old problem with the Guest 
Additions, namely how a user can simply install (i.e. update) the 
"native" Additions which come with VirtualBox without interfering with 
the packaging system if the guest system they are using comes with 
Additions pre-installed.  My latest musings are something along these lines:

  * All files installed by the Additions would be in a single folder 
(/opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-<version> for the native package, and e.g. 
/usr/lib/VBoxGuestAdditions for a distribution package).
  * The Additions would have contain a set-up script, which distribution 
packages could run as part of their post-install, which would build and 
install (to /var/lib/VBoxGuestAdditions, not to the standard kernel 
module folders) the kernel modules and put symlinks into the Additions 
folder in place for /usr/bin/VBoxClient and others.
  * The set-up script would also install an uninstall script as 
/var/lib/VBoxGuestAdditions/uninstall.sh or similar which would reverse 
the effect of the set-up script and allow in particular simple upgrading 
of a distribution package to a native one without needing to touch any 
files managed by the packaging system.  If this was present it would be 
called at the start of the set-up script as part of an upgrade.

Do any of the relevent people (Gianfranco?  Larry?  Sérgio?  Who else?) 
like or dislike any of this, or have better suggestions?  I see that it 
would notably go against the trend of separating the kernel modules into 
their own package or even putting them into the kernel package like 
Ubuntu does.  And it would not allow upgrading from earlier distribution 
packages - we would continue to ask the users to uninstall them 
manually, which is the safest but not the user-friendliest solution.

Thanks and regards,

Michael
-- 
ORACLE Deutschland B.V. & Co. KG   Michael Thayer
Werkstrasse 24                     VirtualBox engineering
71384 Weinstadt, Germany           mailto:michael.thayer at oracle.com

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