Re: Status

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   Since apt has already been ported to use RPMs
   [http://apt-rpm.org/about.shtml], maybe we could port apt for this
   stowfs thing? Then we could run dselect on top of it.

I don't see any specific reason why it shouldn't be possible.  GNU
packages are are basically a bundle (tar, cpio, whatever one prefers),
where the meta data (if any) is stored in a specific subdirectory in
the bundle.  Porting apt would be a good thing I think, since most
users these days are familiar with it.

   BTW - has anyone taken a serious look at using conary
   [http://wiki.conary.com/]? I installed Foresight
   [http://www.foresightlinux.com/] a couple of days ago and I /like/
   the package-management (conary) end of things. conary takes care of
   everything.

Could you describe what you like about it? How it is different from
apt-get/etc?

   If we decided to use conary we wouldn't need to develop/use/fix
   stowfs (or decide on ANY packaging format), and we wouldn't need to
   port apt (or create something with similar functionality).

But would it allow us to use normal file-system calls to manage the
system?  I.e., can one do: tar -C /stow -xvf ~/emacs-21.4.tgz, and
have emacs installed?  I doubt this.

To be clear, we don't really have a `packaging format'.  Our packages
are a copy of what would be on the system, but stored in a different
directory that is `merged' (using stowfs) into a seperate view for the
user (/bin, /share, ...).  How one then makes a bundle of this is up
to the user, most people prefer tar+gzip, since that is what is
commonly avaiable.


I don't think it is fruitful to discuss any changes in how we should
do thing at this point, stowfs already exist, it has some minor
problems, lets fix those.  And then add the missing features.  It will
only distract us from finishing things; and I think we have enough of
distracting things as it is...


Cheers.