[Top][All Lists]
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: Package format/management ramblingss
From: |
Marco Gerards |
Subject: |
Re: Package format/management ramblingss |
Date: |
Fri, 06 Aug 2004 00:21:55 +0200 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.1006 (Gnus v5.10.6) Emacs/21.3 (gnu/linux) |
Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:
> But there is another problem: A *very* few programs consist of a single
> file, so this file could not be just the file which would appear in
> /bin. Instead, it could be a directory which contains all the files
> it ``exports'': bin/emacs, (share/)doc/emacs, ...
> When you request /bin/emacs, it therefore has to search
> /packages/*/bin and /home/<me>/packages/*/bin -- excluding the
> directories it does not prefer -- for the file `emacs', which is very
> inefficient.
>
> The idea is to compute this in advance, and keep a table prepared.
Right. Perhaps it would be a good idea to study how unionfs works,
perhaps there are some nice ideas we can use.
> Yet another aspect is the handling of dependencies. Therefore, every
> package could have its own dependency file, which is syntactically
> similar to the preferences file:
>
> This would all be processed in advance. Recalculation would be needed
> only when the set of installed packages changes.
>
> The Hurd lets a program ask to be notified whenever a certain file or
> dir gets changed. Using this feature the translator for /bin would
> always know when to recalculate something.
Please forgive me if this has been discussed before, I just know what
we have discussed at the LSM several years ago. So I just continue
here with what I can remember. If something was already discussed,
please ignore that part, I will try to catch up. The main reason for
me to write this email is to prevent confusion.
What you are talking about sounds like /bin would get a translator.
And /sbin would get another, etc. That is where is looks like Soeren
got confused.
AFAIK the idea is to have a translator set on "/", that is a union of
all subdirectories in /package/*. So /bin will be a union of
/packages/emacs/bin, /packages/bash/bin, etc.
This part was just to make clear we are all talking about the same
thing.
How about /package/*? The original idea was just to fill it with
symlinks to another directory where all packages can be found. For
example:
/package/emacs -> /packages/emacs-21
/package/bash -> /packages/bash-3.0
If one would decide to change the version that is used you would just
change a symlink. Installing a new package is just untarring it and
creating a symlink.
As you said, you can request file notifications. But what you can do
as well is request directory notifications. Every time you add or
remove a file, in our case a symlink, you know to update several
things. For a single directory of symlinks this is a fast and clean
solution. I don't think it is required to monitor changes within the
packages...
Now that I am thinking about it, how should the translator be set? On
top of /? Or would it be better to set it on top of something like
/usr or /local?
The problem is that if we set the translator on top of "/", that
translator should be unioned as well. In that case the "/" filesystem
should be the one written to.
Thanks,
Marco
- Re: Package format/management ramblingss, Soeren D. Schulze, 2004/08/02
- Message not available
- Re: Package format/management ramblingss, Soeren D. Schulze, 2004/08/02
- Message not available
- Re: Package format/management ramblingss, Soeren D. Schulze, 2004/08/02
- Re: Package format/management ramblingss, Richard Stallman, 2004/08/03
- Re: Package format/management ramblingss, Soeren D. Schulze, 2004/08/04
- Re: Package format/management ramblingss, Richard Stallman, 2004/08/05
- Re: Package format/management ramblingss,
Marco Gerards <=
- Re: Package format/management ramblingss, Richard Stallman, 2004/08/07
- Re: Package format/management ramblingss, Alfred M. Szmidt, 2004/08/08
- Re: Package format/management ramblingss, Richard Stallman, 2004/08/09
- Re: Package format/management ramblingss, Alfred M. Szmidt, 2004/08/08
- Re: Package format/management ramblingss, Soeren D. Schulze, 2004/08/09
- Re: Package format/management ramblingss, Alfred M. Szmidt, 2004/08/09
- Re: Package format/management ramblingss, Soeren D. Schulze, 2004/08/10
- Re: Package format/management ramblingss, Alfred M. Szmidt, 2004/08/10
- Re: Package format/management ramblingss, Marco Gerards, 2004/08/09
- Re: Package format/management ramblingss, Soeren D. Schulze, 2004/08/10