Re: Package managment idea...

["Jason Nordwick" <nordwick xcf berkeley edu>]

>Well, there are only two formats right now that matter: rpm and dpkg.

We do have BSD people here, too.  Please look closely at the ports and
package machanisms before omitting them.

> or source-code only (BSD ports).

This is not true.  As an example, I point you to either the CVSup binary
packages, the X11 binary packages, and the /bin binary package.  There are
more references.

>Tarballs and source are not packages in the sense we care about here.

You will _never_ get away from the.  They are part of the UNIX way and have
been that way since before you were programming.

> The key requirement is detailed dependency information.

BSD has this.

>The fact that libapt-pkg already exists is a strong argument in favor too.

I don't think that we are in need of one that soon.  FreeBSD Inc. has paid
programmers to do nothing but develop a new packaging system that takes into
account the advantages of current systems.

>> (Hint: if anyone decides on trying to come up with a new package format,
>> or something like what I have described, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE make sure
>> it can deal with sub-packaging!  This is one thing I truly --HATE--
>> about RPM; either the functionality isn't there or nobody uses it.
>>

As a side not, sub-packaging can be done with meta-packages and dependency
information.  This is how the mega gnome package is done under BSD.

-jay