Package format/management ramblingss

[Barry deFreese]

Hey folks.

After reading up a little bit on package managers/formats, etc. I 
thuoght I would send some thoughts along to hopefully spur some dialog.

RPM:

Decent package format and management tools.  GPL'd.  Support for pgp 
signatures, pre/post scripts, binary and source packages, and more.

Cons:

Can have dependency issues when using a myriad of repositories.  And on 
a personal note, I don't like Redhat.. :-)

Deb/dpkg:

Good package format and management tools.  GPL'd.  Pretty much supports 
all that RPM does and then some.

Cons:

I'm sure Alfred will say that one Con is that it's Debian! :-)  To some 
point I agree.  Though I personally am not anti-Debian, it would seem to 
be counterproductive to have to maintain a /DEBIAN environment for conf 
files, pre/post scripts etc on a non-Debian system.  Another con may be 
some of the complexities involved in creating packages.

Stow:

Lightweight, easy to use package management utilizing .tar.gz archives.  
Also happens to be a GNU project.

Cons:

No good way to resolve dependencies.  I don't like the relience on 
Perl.  No pre/post script support.

Thoughts:

I like the Stow structure.   I think it is cool.  I am even warming up 
to Marco's idea of a stowfs/packagefs.. ;-)  However, from a (l)user 
perspective it may be too minimalistic.  If we have to add stuff for 
paths, dependency resolution, pre/post scripts, we may as well write a 
new package format.  Also, if I have to manually get the tarball, 
extract it, "make" it, etc before packagefs does it's thing, what's the 
point?  Again, from a (l)user perspective, apt is a beautiful thing.  As 
a user, I just want to run a command that goes and gets the package and 
it installs it for me.  So maybe we make a new minimalist package format 
with some nice front end tools but utilizing the stow methodology??

Thoughts, comments, flames???

--
Barry deFreese
Debian 3.0r1 "Woody"
GNU/Hurd
Registered Linux "Newbie" #302256 - Hurd H4XX0r wannabe

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving
to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe
trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is
winning." Rich Cook.