Re: GNU System Explanation

[Alfred M\. Szmidt]

   > Do you mean *copying* package.tar.gz into /packages should
   > install the package? or you mean *extracting* the package.tar.gz
   > into /packages?

   Depends on how the system will be made at the end. I would make a
   virtual filesystem in /packages/foo.pkg and then translate it to
   corresponding directories. What I mean is that you see
   /packages/foo.pkg on one side and /bin/foo on the other side. And
   foo.pkg is a file with a filesystem (consider tar.gz a filesystem,
   too) that has /bin/foo inside. Then you can just copy the foo.pkg
   into /packages and that's all you have to do. Except you'd have to
   consider installing run-time dependencies somehow (don't know how
   yet).

   The other way is to extract foo.tgz into /packages or just copy
   /somewhere/foo into /packages/foo. If you translate /somewhere to
   your prefered ftp package mirror, or you your CD, that is how
   "installation" from remote (or local) repository could be
   done. Another way is to get the foo.tgz, translate it to somewhere
   and copy it's contents to /packages. Or just do a tar xzpvf to
   /packages.

If one now really wants such a scheme (it will be slow, and take up
lots of memory!), one can simply setup a special translator that takes
the content of a directory with compressed packages, and makes a
`view' (it doesn't have to extract, but it could) in another location.
Then you can simply tell stowfs to include this directory when making
the /bin, /lib, ... listings.  If anyone is familiar with hostmux or
usermux in the Hurd, then they will know what I'm talking about.

There are many possibilities to allow for installation of `compressed
packages', the only thing that is required by stowfs is a way to
access the actual content.


I'd like to suggest everyone to read/scroll through the mailing list
archives, they aren't that huge, and are quite a nice read.

Cheers!