Re: Comparing PackageFS and GNU PM

[Luca Ferroni]

Il Sun, 26 Sep 2004 04:27:42 -0400,  Richard Stallman <address@hidden> ha 
scritto:

> It looks like this cp command just puts the emacs21/info file into
> INSTALL.  But
> 
>     - Show files installed by a package with "ls -R INSTALL/emacs21"
> 
> Here it seems like INSTALL/emacs21 would contain all the files
> that Emacs installs anywhere.
> 
> Where would these files come from?  Where would PackageFS find them,
> and how would it know where to find them?
> 

If an administrator make a package directory into INSTALL/,
(as he does with "cp -a AVAILABLE/emacs21 INSTALL/")

PackageFS:
- does ordinary cp
- installs the package
- gets package owned files from underlying package manager and
creates INSTALL subtree containing symlinks to them
- gets package dependencies and reverse dependencies
and create specific entries in DEPENDS_ON and DEPEND_FOR directories

> But /package is not limited to symlinks.  You can, if you wish, untar
> the package directly under /package.  Then it is installed immediately
> by virtue of being there.
>

Ok. that's even simpler than unpack and make symlinks.
 
> So you get both alternatives.
> 
>     1) PackageFS relies on existing package managers... currently they
>     work quite well, and maybe it would be better to improve them than
>     building a new one from scratch.
> 
> I don't understand that part.

I was wondering about  needing of a new package manager.,
I mean a program that handles resolving dependencies, 
"injecting" a package into the file-system, etc..., 
but ams cleaned all of my doubts. :)

Bye
--
Luca Ferroni
www.cs.unibo.it/~fferroni/