On Dec 6, 2007 5:26 AM, Hisham Muhammad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> I just received this link and it's an interesting read for everyone
> interested in source-based packaging systems (like our very own
> Compile :) ). It's a series of interviews with the people behind
> NetBSD's pkgsrc, which is celebrating 10 years in 2007. Various bits
> of food for thought there.
>
> http://www.netbsd.org/gallery/10years.html
Interesting read. A few points I noted from it:
- Automatic build farms are a recurring theme. A farm is a bit beyond
us, but we could probably organise *something* (and have discussed
it). It's useful both for bug-finding and for building binary
packages.
- pkgsrc is also investigating using a union filesystem that they call
"fanout", which I find an interesting metaphor. It's also specifically
mentioned that transactional installation is a goal for that. I can
see where that is useful for fragile system packages.
- At another point there's a desire for a system "where the filesystem
hierarchy the user saw might depend on the software they wanted to run
at any particularly time", which sounds familiar too.
- Regular stable snapshots of packages. We don't really support that
at all at the moment, other than just not upgrading from ISO releases.
It's probably a bit beyond us, though.
- Something else that comes up a few times is having higher-level
package managers wrapping the underlying system. I know it isn't a
really a major design goal, but I think Compile could do better in
that area. (Something I have a personal interest in, of course)
- pkgjam sounds like a very similar system - directory-per-package,
multiple versions installed simultaneously. It also creates hard links
to all the files in a program's dependencies within their own
directory, which is an interesting approach, and quite robust. And we
get a mention at the end of that section.
-Michael
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