From owner-freebsd-arch  Wed Jul 10 23:46:38 2002
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Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2002 23:50:35 -0700
From: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com>
Organization: Softweyr LLC
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To: Cy Schubert - CITS Open Systems Group <Cy.Schubert@uumail.gov.bc.ca>
Cc: Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@ofug.org>,
	Doug Barton <DougB@FreeBSD.ORG>, Dan Moschuk <dan@FreeBSD.ORG>,
	arch@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: Package system flaws?
References: <200207091343.g69DhOfP080432@cwsys.cwsent.com>
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Cy Schubert - CITS Open Systems Group wrote:
> 
> In message <xzp65zpl0tf.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no>, Dag-Erling Smorgrav
> writes:
> > Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> writes:
> > > If you're sensible about the encoding, the metadata doesn't have to be
> > > at the beginning of the media.
> >
> > Yes, it does, to allow installation from non-rewindable streams.

No, it doesn't, you just have to make sure that the metadata for each
chunk gets downloaded in time to decide if you want to skip over the
chunk or not.

The idea I like the best is to have the filesets (picture a .tar.gz
or a .zip here) be external references on the fileserver; the XML
contains all the metadata and URLs for the filesets.  As you fetch
the XML, or after you've fetched all of the XML, you fetch the
filesets you're not skipping.  Once you have the filesets on local
storage, you can rewrite the URL references or convert them to
in-line encoding, leaving the ones that have been skipped in the
original URL encoding.

For instance:

<package name="cat">
  <fileset type="binaries" location="@HTTP_MASTER_SITE@/cat.bin.tar.gz" root="@ROOT@" />
  <fileset type="manpages" location="@HTTP_MASTER_SITE@/cat.man.tar.gz" root="@MAN@" />
  <fileset type="language" encoding="en_US" location="@HTTP_MASTER_SITE@/cat.en_US.tar.gz" />
  <fileset type="language" encoding="en_UK" location="@HTTP_MASTER_SITE@/cat.en_UK.tar.gz" />
  <fileset type="language" encoding="fr_FR" location="@HTTP_MASTER_SITE@/cat.fr_FR.tar.gz" />
</package>

Now assume you specified you want to install only the en_UK language 
files.  pkg_add would leave the en_US and fr_FR as external references,
download the binaries, man pages, and en_UK filesets, and convert those
three into local file references OR directly encode them into the
package file.

> IMO, this is extremely important.

Yup, you just have to be sensible about the encoding.

-- 
            "Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"

Wes Peters                                                         Softweyr LLC
wes@softweyr.com                                           http://softweyr.com/

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