Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 01:07:11 -0400 From: The Anarcat <anarcat@anarcat.dyndns.org> To: Mike Meyer <mwm-dated-1020053239.3f1ac8@mired.org> Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: [resend] packaging base (was: /etc/defaults/rc.conf theory) Message-ID: <20020424050711.GC973@lenny.anarcat.dyndns.org> In-Reply-To: <15558.12150.814150.317904@guru.mired.org> References: <20020424030937.GC323@lenny.anarcat.dyndns.org> <15558.12150.814150.317904@guru.mired.org>
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On Tue Apr 23, 2002 at 11:07:18PM -0500, Mike Meyer wrote:
> In <20020424030937.GC323@lenny.anarcat.dyndns.org>, The Anarcat <anarcat@anarcat.dyndns.org> typed:
> > [this thread is still alive? i'll spice it up a bit then]
> > You don't need libh to package the base system.
>
> True, but not complete.
>
> > And actually, it would be a good thing if people started thinking
> > about packaging the base system apart from libh.
>
> People *have* thought about doing that. They concluded that libh was
> the correct solution.
I wasn't aware of that.
> If you disagree, feel free to submit pr's with patches that solve
> the problem without libh.
Right now, I'm working on making libh do *something*, mind you, so I'm
not the one who's going to work on the extra-libh solution.
Not my field.
> > The main issues I see about packaging the base system is [1] how plists
> > are to be handled and [2] how configurations files are to be handled.
>
> You missed the biggie: [3] how the base system install is handled.
The same way the rest of the system is. [3] = [1] + [2]
> You either have to make all the packages floppy-sized chunks,
Which is impossible.
> or fix the package system to deal with packages that are split up
> into floppy-sized chunks.
Which is moderatly feasable. Some people have already started working
on a pkgAPI which would encapsulate such problems.
Also, I don't think it would be very complex to cat many files into a
single one on the filesystem prior to installing a package. Very
simple, I think.
> This has to be done using the grotty interface library currently
> used to do the base system install.
You're probably talking about sysinstall? Then I guess than, yes, it
will be a pain to implement.
But guess what: libh won't get through if it's not a drop-in
replacement for sysinstall.
This means sysinstall must be re-written from scratch. Which is
arguably equivalent to adding split-package functionalities to the
current sysinstall.
But that was not my original point:
> All the people I know of who know that sytem well enough to do the
> job consider it more effort than it's worth. Hence, the effort to
> provide a better set of tools for building the better install system
> that goes under the moniker "the libh project".
The libh project doesn't solve the problem of packaging the base
system. It provides a new API and package format that will be more
efficient and robust, along with a dual console/graphical interface,
but does not deal with source management and build systems.
In other words, libh doesn't know about the ports collection or
/usr/src yet, and I don't think it's going to change soon. That is a
different beast.
Now if *you* have patches to make libh recognize split-packages, i'd
happily commit them to the tree.
And there'll probably be someone to commit your patches to packaging
/usr/src in a pkgAPI-independant way.
A.
--
Computer science is no more about computers
than astronomy is about telescopes
- E. Dijkstra
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