David, I agree with you on most points, especially on this: IPS is an Oracle only solution, really. OpenIndiana and OmniOS use it, but the version they use diverges from Oracle. And ~0 ISVs (at least commercial ones) distribute software in this format.
However, IPS is not totally without merit (and I despise it mightily): -) The metadata format is elegant. The fact that packages are completely described in the manifest is a beautiful thing. (SVR4 could be enhanced to do this.) The elimination of scripting *forced* this, and to the end that we got rid of driver installation scripts, this is a worthy end result. -) Elimination of patches (particularly "partial packages") is also a worthy end result. This could trivially have been achieved with SVR4, but IPS "forced" the issue; a technology change may well have been necessary to overcome the significant cultural barriers that would have resisted elimination of partial packages. -) The SVR4 packaging code base is a major crime scene. I know whereof I speak -- I started the process to clean it up, and removed a fair amount of crufty crap. But what remains may cost more to maintain then its worth. I'd love to see a minimalist distro take up the call to "post process" the illumos-gate IPS manifests into SVR4 packages. (I significantly think that *reverting* the packaging back into the old SVR4 packages is a huge mistake -- I know some others have done this in the name of compatibility with S10 -- I think Joerg and Peter have both trod that path. Long descriptive package names, and the reorganization that we have got in our current manifests is not something I would just throw out.) All that said, I'd also point out that IPS isn't killing illumos. There are commercial products which don't use IPS packages. Here are three examples I know of: * Nexenta uses Debian * Joyent uses pkgsrc * At DEY, we use our own scripts which parse IPS manifests None of the above are terribly dependent upon ISVs to support a viable illumos ecosystem. Of course, none of the above are terribly focused on general purpose compute. (Joyent "sort of" is, but they aren't dependent on it thanks to their support of KVM and other branded zones.) - Garrett ------------------------------------------- illumos-discuss Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/182180/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/182180/21175430-2e6923be Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21175430&id_secret=21175430-6a77cda4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
