From owner-freebsd-libh Wed Nov 1 10:42:39 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-libh@freebsd.org Received: from atlas.dnai.com (atlas.dnai.com [207.181.194.95]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B6EB437B4C5 for ; Wed, 1 Nov 2000 10:42:37 -0800 (PST) Received: from azoth.dnai.com (azoth.dnai.com [207.181.194.94]) by atlas.dnai.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA05586; Wed, 1 Nov 2000 10:42:36 -0800 (PST) Received: from acm.org (207-172-123-6.s260.tnt1.sfrn.ca.dialup.rcn.com [207.172.123.6]) by azoth.dnai.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA15348; Wed, 1 Nov 2000 10:42:35 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <3A0063F5.4798055B@acm.org> Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2000 10:41:57 -0800 From: Tim Kientzle Reply-To: kientzle@acm.org X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (X11; I; FreeBSD 3.3-RELEASE i386) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Daniel C. Sobral" Cc: Patrick Bihan-Faou , libh@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Making the Packages System Better References: <39DCC860.B04F7D50@acm.org> <20001006155542.A29218@cichlids.cichlids.com> <39F3CDD7.15B889E7@acm.org> <20001023190412.B507@cichlids.cichlids.com> <39F47E98.4BB647AA@acm.org> <20001023202244.B10374@cichlids.cichlids.com> <39F48F4A.38D458C2@acm.org> <39FCF244.5A8C8E59@newsguy.com> <39FDC12E.304B0011@acm.org> <39FE2406.150CA3B1@newsguy.com> <00cb01c042f1$1a347190$040aa8c0@local.mindstep.com> <39FE562C.714DBE7C@newsguy.com> <39FFCD73.7364C2BF@acm.org> <39FFE5B7.8FC4216B@newsguy.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-libh@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG "Daniel C. Sobral" wrote: > > Tim Kientzle wrote: > > > [diet quote] > > > > Comments? > > To be brief, I don't like it. :-) > > Too SysV-ishy. Anyway, don't mind me. If you bring this up elsewhere > you'll see plenty objections and downright flames, so I'll spare you any > here. Actually, I've brought it up in several forums and the response has been interesting. Generally, I get one of three responses: * Agreement, often from people who have actually used something like this. * Worries about path explosion, which is a non-issue. * Vague "I don't like it" comments. So far, I've seen exactly two valid technical objections: * symlinks slow down file lookups. I don't know any good way to solve this one. Hardlinks would solve this issue, but would make link directory maintenance considerably uglier. * symlinks confuse programs that look for their data files relative to the executable location. One past culprit was the JDK, but that's been fixed in later versions. For other programs, you can mindlessly create a one-line shell-script wrapper that invokes the real program in it's package directory. This is more-or-less the system I'm going to be using; if the FreeBSD "package" tools don't support it, I won't be using them. No great loss, personally, but I just thought it would be nice if other FreeBSD users could benefit as well. - Tim To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-libh" in the body of the message