Date: 26 Sep 1999 16:14:54 -0400 From: Rajappa Iyer <rsi@panix.com> To: Tony Finch <dot@dotat.at> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: A new package fetching utility, pkg_get Message-ID: <199909262014.QAA14926@panix.com> References: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9909241440450.71250-100000@jade.chc-chimes.com> <6939.938202872@localhost> <19990924140357.A71450@norn.ca.eu.org> <E11VKNp-000FRK-00@fanf.eng.demon.net>
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Tony Finch <dot@dotat.at> writes: > Rajappa Iyer <rsi@panix.com> wrote: > >1. It does a terrible job at tracking dependencies, IMHO. If you > > install packages A, B and C at the same time and A depends on C, > > it's not smart enough to install C first. pkg_order | tsort should > > do the job, one would presume. > > > >2. It does an even more terrible job at fetching dependencies. Try > > installing a complex set of programs and files (e.g. gnome) and see > > how many individual components you have to fetch. Contrast with > > "cd /usr/ports/x11/gnome; make install". > > Both of those are handled by the apt-get program, and were in the past > handled by dselect (but dselect is horrid for a whole load of other > reasons). apt-get does a better job at collections, true, but in my experience still does not do a proper package ordering before installation. And if component packages have inconsistent dependencies, apt-get puts your system in a state that is hard to recover from. I've had both of these things happen to me while installing gnome. Now one can argue that this reflects a problem with the individual package rather than the infrastructure, but I feel that if a package manager deals with a bundle in a manner similar to a package, it should deal with consistency issues of the component packages. Don't get me wrong. I think that the problem that Debian package manager is trying to solve is not an easy one to solve in a completely bulletproof manner and I don't have a solution to offer offhand, either. apt-get is undoubtedly an improvement on dselect, but I think it builds on a fundamentally shaky infrastructure, IMHO. My gut feeling is that one would be better off building a super-duper package management system on top of the ports mechanism and extending the existing pkg_* tools. Regards, Rajappa -- <rsi@panix.com> a.k.a. Rajappa Iyer. New York, New York. We're too busy mopping the floor to turn off the faucet. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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