Moinak Ghosh wrote: > A hearty +1 to all this. Taking bandwidth for granted is a big mistake.
There are two views to this. By not forcing users to download a large DVD, we're focusing on not wasting bandwidth since they download a "core" set of packages, and then add on exactly what they need. > There are large segments of the Globe where bandwidth is neither > readily available nor cheap. While I stay in Bangalore and have access > to 1MBps bandwidth with unlimited data traffic at reasonable rates and > even 8MBps bandwith available to homes, the vast regions outside > Bangalore are not that well endowed. The pittance that goes there in the > name of broadband is 256KBps via wire and 180KBps via CDMA wireless. > Imagine doing a 'pkg image-update' over 180KBps flaky wireless connection! The flipside of course are users where the amount of bandwidth isn't the issue, but rather the connectivity itself. However, I would argue these users would have just as limited an experience with many GNU/Linux distributions to a certain extent since at last check, Debian doesn't offer a DVD with all 15,000 packages from Universe, etc. either ;) Of course, with an on-disk format someone could sync all of the packages from those repositories to a DVD, but I wonder how often that actually happens... Remember that the distribution constructor can be used to create a more comprehensive installation. > This has been one of my gripes about the network-centric design of IPS. As you have been aware, one of the biggest problems in the past has been Solaris' lack of a pcakaging system that did *not* have a network-centric design. It was important that the initial focus was on moving OpenSolaris to a network-centric packaging system and that we work out whatever issues there were surrounding it before attempting an on-disk format. > The alternative to a LiveDVD is a repo-DVD with a package collection > on the DVD. In addition an on-disk package format really helps here esp. > if people want to exchange individual packages. I have ported/developed > this cool software and I want to build a package and give it to friends to > test, how do I do it ? Create a repository for a single or few packages ... > yuck. I'm not certain what your aversion is to a repository; a repository is just a set of fairly simplistic directory structure plus an index. It isn't much different than the on-disk format of some packaging systems. It is also extremely easy to create one with the new version of pkgsend in 2009.06, or the new version of pkgrecv in the pkg gate. You'll be happy to know that we'll be providing an ISO image of the 2009.06 repository soon with instructions on how to use the repository from the DVD directly, or to setup your own. We're well aware of the importance of an on-disk format, but moving to a network-centric packaging system was the most important thing to do initially. Cheers, -- Shawn Walker
