Would it be easy to add .bin installs as a part normal part of A-Shell releases, or would it add a lot of manual effort?

I ask because we have a scripted process to update customer's A-Shell version from a custom created .tar.gz

The process that builds the .tar.gz does the following
1. it starts by downloading the latest .bin file
2. installs it to a temporary director via cpio/ash_install
3. adds the latest version of .so files to the bin directory
4. creates .tar.gz

The current problem that it doesn't contain the latest .LIT files. I was going to try to use UPDCUR (before compressing the /vm directory) to handle this. In practice, when manually running UPDCUR, I have to run it multiple times to get all files to update. There are usually network issues with individual files, and running it multiple times eventually gets them downloaded (usually). This is same experience we had when using SOSUPD or ASHUPD in the past. This process just instant reliable enough to add to the .tar.gz build. This leaves our servers without the latest .LIT.

If we there were regularly posted .bin installs there would be far fewer out of date .LIT files to begin with.

I just need to up my build/scripting game.

That would be much appreciated

I posted an el7 complete bin release if you want to try it...

ash-6.5.1650.1-el7.bin

Note that the bin no longer includes the 90x,* sample directories.

Also, it is now possible to execute the ash_install via sudo, i.e.

I had to make an adjustment to the ash_install processing script to revert back to USERID=$LOGNAME, but other than that it seems to work just fine.

Is there a historical or some other reason for .run/.lit/.sbx files to be in the /vm/miame directory after a new .bin install?

No, I wouldn't expect any of those file types to be in the /vm/miame directory after a new .bin install. What install package were you using? It may have been that the installation got aborted, or there is a bug in that version of the package. Or maybe they were there from long ago?

Normally you should only have the subdirectories (bin, dsk0, etc.), the miame.ini, and possibly some text files.

In this specific case it's from ash-6.5.1651.8-el7.bin.

Here's a snippet of the /vm/miame immediately after ash_install is ran to an empty directory.


You can see there not only .lit/.sbx/etc. but also backup copies .s01, .p01, .new file extensions. Not a huge deal, just running it up the flagpole.

Something amiss there, I need to review that. I think they come from the fact that the install builder dumps everything into that directory and then moves them individually to their appointed locations. Anything left over would be surplus files that found their way into the install source staging area that weren't actually part of the installation.