Since apt has already been ported to use RPMs [http://apt-rpm.org/about.shtml], maybe we could port apt for this stowfs thing? Then we could run dselect on top of it.
I don't see any specific reason why it shouldn't be possible. GNU packages are are basically a bundle (tar, cpio, whatever one prefers), where the meta data (if any) is stored in a specific subdirectory in the bundle. Porting apt would be a good thing I think, since most users these days are familiar with it. BTW - has anyone taken a serious look at using conary [http://wiki.conary.com/]? I installed Foresight [http://www.foresightlinux.com/] a couple of days ago and I /like/ the package-management (conary) end of things. conary takes care of everything. Could you describe what you like about it? How it is different from apt-get/etc? If we decided to use conary we wouldn't need to develop/use/fix stowfs (or decide on ANY packaging format), and we wouldn't need to port apt (or create something with similar functionality). But would it allow us to use normal file-system calls to manage the system? I.e., can one do: tar -C /stow -xvf ~/emacs-21.4.tgz, and have emacs installed? I doubt this. To be clear, we don't really have a `packaging format'. Our packages are a copy of what would be on the system, but stored in a different directory that is `merged' (using stowfs) into a seperate view for the user (/bin, /share, ...). How one then makes a bundle of this is up to the user, most people prefer tar+gzip, since that is what is commonly avaiable. I don't think it is fruitful to discuss any changes in how we should do thing at this point, stowfs already exist, it has some minor problems, lets fix those. And then add the missing features. It will only distract us from finishing things; and I think we have enough of distracting things as it is... Cheers. _______________________________________________ gnu-system-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-system-discuss
