Re: GNU System Explanation

[Barry deFreese]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Filip Brcic" <address@hidden>
To: <address@hidden>
Cc: "Barry deFreese" <address@hidden>
Sent: Saturday, February 11, 2006 9:40 PM
Subject: Re: GNU System Explanation

> Дана Saturday 11 February 2006 19:56, Barry deFreese је написао(ла):
> > Can someone please give me a concise explanation of what the intended 
> > goals
> > are here?
>
> The goal is to make package installation and removal as easy as cp and rm.

This is my point.  I don't think it can be unless you ignore things like 
dependencies.

> > I understand that you want packages isolation in /packages, but why?
> > Managing multiple versions of a package could potentially become a 
> > headache
> > I believe.
>
> With current state yes. But that problem will be solved.

How?

> > For example:  I have /packages/foo-1.1/bin/foo  and /lib/libfoo.  Then I
> > install foo-1.2 which has /packages/foo-1.2/bin/foo and /lib/libfoo,
> > foo-1.1 becomes pretty much unusable anyway, does it not?
>
> Why do you need both foo-1.1 and foo-1.2?

I would ask the same question.  If this is not the goal, what is the 
advantage of "package isolation"?

> If you take a look at how Mac OS X implements several versions, you can see
> that you have
>
> /path/to/foo/1.1
> /path/to/foo/1.2
>
> and
>
> /path/to/foo/Current (symlink to for example 1.2).
>
> That is not a bad way to handle multiple versions. It would, of course,
> require tweaking of stowfs, but... that should not be the problem. And that
> way you can use 1.1/lib/libfoo and 1.2/lib/libfoo if you explicitly need
> libfoo by version. If you don't care about the version, use /lib/libfoo and
> you'll get the current version.

OK, understood but this still seems extraneous to me, the uninformed :-)

> > I also understand that you have philosophical differences with Debian.
> > Fine, but Debian provides a nice set of tools for package management when
> > dealing with things like dependencies, reverse dependencies, etc.  Yes, 
> > it
> > would be nice to be able to use common filesystem commands to install and
> > manage packages but is it realistic? If I extract foo-1.1.tar.gz to
> > /packages/foo but foo needs bar to run now what?  OK, so I extract
> > bar-1.0.tar.gz to /packages/bar.  But now I install baz which also 
> > depends
> > on bar, there becomes 1 to many and potentially many to 1 relationships 
> > of
> > packages.
>
> I didn't quite understand your example. Dependencies will be implemented
> somehow.

This is my fundamental question.  If there are decent workable package 
management systems out there, why not use them rather than trying to 
re-invent the wheel?

> > What do people see as currently wrong with dpkg other than being Debian 
> > and
> > a little cumbersome for developers?
>
> Why cumbersome? I find it much more developer-friendly than for example 
> rpm.

I like dpkg/apt, I just hear from lots of "GNU" folks that it sucks.  Heck, 
right now if stowfs is fast enough I can take a Debian package and do 
apt-get Dpkg::Options::="--instdir=/packages/foo/1.2/" .  Right now it 
breaks because the postinst scripts and such try to run in "standard" 
directories so it breaks.  However, if stowfs is "immediate", this might 
alleviate this problem.

Not to mention, there is always the option to modify dpkg and all the 
debhelper scripts to do what you want.

Thanks for the response!

> Filip

Barry deFreese (aka bddebian)