On Jan 6, 2013, at 2:17 PM, Peter Tribble <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 2:27 PM, Jim Klimov <[email protected]> wrote: >> On 2012-12-24 18:48, Garrett D'Amore wrote: >>> >>> 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.) > > Some work has gone on, but it's incomplete. I find the new long package > names to be no more descriptive than the old (and often less helpful, > as they imply meaning and structure which does not in fact exist). And > the organization - package boundaries and dependencies - still needs > a lot of work. For me, changing the names means diverging from the illumos upstream. I don't think that the package names mean much to me, though the SUNWxxx names were pretty terrible. (If you aren't a solaris guy, how would you under stand what SUNWcsl is? Certainly system-libraries is more descriptive!) > >> Well, compatibility with S10 (and older) is a huge bonus for a distro >> that would seek to be "the opensource replacement for legacy Solaris" >> and would be easy to update into (i.e. via LiveUpgrade at best). > > Define "compatibility". Binary? (Tricky, with S10, as the proliferation > of open-source libraries drops you into the same dependency and > compatibility issues that plague other OSes.) Difficult at the packaging > and administration layer as so much has changed - claiming > compatibility may be unsustainable. Having something that is > familiar and works the same way should be possible, but that's a > different claim entirely. Packaging compatibility is probably of dubious merit. I don't know of any ISV software that properly relies on or expresses dependencies on core SVR4 packages. API compatibility is far more key, and an area where illumos has done a decent job, IMO. Administrative compatibility is something that the OpenSolaris guys thoroughly busted with SMF, pkg5, and other sweeping changes. Not sure how much that is a barrier to adoption, though. - 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
