On Jun 4, 2007, at 10:50 AM, Jason Corley wrote:
So what do people think of a "reference implementation" distribution
around rpm5? I recognize that the politics could quickly overshadow
the utility, but my idea was nothing fancy, no patches, just a
minimalist Linux system that reflects how to use rpm and what ways rpm
provides to solve different packaging problems (like lua for glibc
scriptlets as an example). The rationale is that I'm one of those
people that learns by example, and seeing how this team of rpm
veterans pieces together a base system I think could greatly benefit
the rpm using community at large and perhaps even become a base for
distros to work with. Also I think having clear examples of how to
use "new" RPM features like lua, YAML, runtime probes, etc. will help
with eventual adoption. As Jeff points out, new rpm features take a
few years to reach the masses so maybe this is one way to help speed
up that process. Thoughts?
I too am one who learns by example, and there are many reasons why
a small set of known quality packaging would help rpm development, not
the least of which is in starting down the rugged path of --rollback QA.
(aside)
There's a test-harness in rpm cvs written by James for --rollback.
The test-harness
has many appealing features, simple but extensible, documented, many
useful bells and whistles that I can appreciate, etc. Tying reference
packaging into
the test-harness would permit automatic QA for installs and the
features used.
The alternative is what I used to use, /usr/lib/rpm/trpm, an
absolutely grotty piece of
scripting that I used for assembling and reproducing rpm install/
upgrade/erase
problems from package collections. Think: implicit dependency solving
using globbing.
How about using the packages in the "inner circle of dependency hell" as
a starting reference implementation? That basically means that the
package set
is enough to get /bin/sh functional in a chroot and nothing more.
That already includes glibc-common, which can/will benefit from lua
scriptlets,
provides a testbed for bootstrapping from an empty chroot, where
there are
many hard packaging problems to solve, and does not include too many
packages that we will lose our focus or get distracted by politics.
If up to me, I'd suggest we choose some embedded architecture useful for
Mark @work or, alternatively) swipe packages from Fedora/ARM just
starting up.
The goal is to find something useful for someone, perhaps Ralf and
openpkg
has useful work like bootstrapping Mac OS X instead.
(aside)
I helped Ralph Siemsen with the last RHL9 ARM distro a couple summers
back
while waiting to be fired from RedHat. I have 2 functional netwinders
and a fair
amount of ARM experience if you want to try jump-starting Fedora-ARM.
I'll
likely be talkin g to Ralph SIemsen in Ottawa at OLS this month too.
We (or at least I) do have to focus on rpm-5.0 and XAR and depsolving
and Mac OS X by, say,
mid-July at the latest or rpm-5.0 won't exist in time for Leopard.
73 de Jeff
______________________________________________________________________
RPM Package Manager http://rpm5.org
Developer Communication List rpm-devel@rpm5.org
