Arch Linux

I obviously don't expect any rapid adoption of this idea, but I'd like to document it here for discussions and (ideally) eventual triage.

It would be nice to have local install scripts -- ideally somewhere below /etc/pacman.d/ -- that can be triggered on the same actions as the normal <pkgname>.install provided with a given package. These scripts could either supplement or replace actions by the package's install scripts, ex: a variable VISIBILITY={before|replace|after}. VISIBILITY could have a global setting at the head of a file, and be overridden on a per-action basis (within pre_upgrade() for example).

Another option is to have a general dispatching script, /etc/pacman.d/dispatcher.sh, that's called with the arguments <pkgname> <action>. By default the script would simply source /etc/pacman.d/local/<pkgname>.install and execute the function <action> according to the VISIBILITY variable.


I would use this functionality to do things like rebuild modules from AUR packages after a kernel upgrade and check my filesystem for files created by a package after an install (ex: R's packages are placed under /usr, but aren't removed after an uninstall).