pkg

CLIENT DEDUCTION AND SELF-REPAIR

In the case of a partially installed system, a system installed by a

previous packaging regime, or a system that has been somehow damaged,

it is possible for the pkg system to identify the current system's

state via a deductive process.

That is, the client can examine an image's contents and determine, by

interrogation, the precise version of each package installed in the

image. If a specific file is missing, then the client can move the

package from (INSTALLED, .) to (INSTALLED, damaged) and record the

operation it would take to restore the package's state (via restoring

the contents).

XXX Most efficient algorithm for the minimum set of queries to

identify the specific version of a package an image contains?