In the struggle to become subscribed to this list I'm afraid my first post may have gone AWOL ... apologies if people receive this twice, but here it is again.
Fulcrum have an install-base that needs to be run on a number of different machines on various sites, running anything from SunOS 4.x all the way to Solaris 2.7 (nee SunOS 5.7) ... it's reasonably large and at the moment it's a pain for our Operations group to keep all the hosts up-to-date with the particular versions on each of the sites (long story, trust me), and we've had problems in the past were the install on a host wasn't the same as any of the others (again, a long story) So, we're looking to put it all in a packaging environment and use appropriate tools to manage it in a controlled manner ... we are also looking at putting our install-base on other *nix platforms in the future (Linux, BSD, HP etc) as well, so we'd prefer to compile/hack on something which would cover any *nix variant with a minimum of fuss and steer clear of any proprietory packaging systems ... we'd also like to keep away from the system package management tools for the simple reason that this install-base is intended to have minimal impact on and minimal support requirements from the host that it is installed into. There is little point in Fulcrum creating such a tool from scratch, since the Open Source community appears to have done a lot of homework in this regard ... I'm also keen to see that any development work that we undertake be useful to others as well as ourselves and intend to feed any development outcomes back to the Open Source community. In researching this, many people have commented that they would also find a portable custom package management tool to be immensely useful. I picked the Debian package set mainly because I have more familiarity with it - I've been using Debian on my systems at home for the last two years approximately - and most if not all of our requirements are more than amply met by the system. Before Fulcrum undertakes any serious porting work, I'd like to know if there have been any other efforts to port the Debian package toolset to a wider range of *nix variants, other than Linux, BSD and the HURD. Should I be talking to anyone in particular? Are there other tools about that I might not be aware of? Are there any resources that would help in this effort? Would this undertaking be useful to the Debian community? Regards, Malcolm Herbert -- /\ The Fulcrum Consulting Group Malcolm Herbert - Consultant /\O\ Professional Services For Operation [EMAIL PROTECTED] / /\ Of A Networked Computing Environment ph: +61-3-9621-2100 /o | \ 8/628 Bourke St, Melbourne VIC 3000, Australia fx: +61-3-9621-2724
