On Sun, 2008-06-29 at 22:36 +0100, Matt Lawrence wrote: > Thank you. Your feedback has been most informative. I'll try to deal > with each of the issues I (think I) understand, to the best of my > knowledge. > > > we don't have a package database - or rather the filesystem is the database. > > Ah, yes. Sorry, that is what I meant by package database. I was > unaware it was as simple as cp etc to add the software to your > "database". That's awesome. > > > I don't know if this is what you stated above, but we do have a > > binary package format, binaries in an archive. > > We also support third-party, non-free binaries, like flash and video > > drivers by just unpacking them into our file system and symlinking > > them. Is this what you're after? > > Your existing binaries could probably be used with Zero Install to > perform automatic dependency handling and non-root installation. Zero > Install would may need to have an additional optional component for > symlinking. I'll ask the Zero Install developer if he would mind > implementing this. > > > what needs to be flexible about it? > > Good point. I didn't clarify that at all. The hope is for it to be > flexible enough that it can be installed across a variety of > distributions. If other distributions decide to use Zero Install as > well, that means there is likely to be even more packages available > for your distribution. > > > For example, Nix binaries are > > stored in "Nix Archive" format which is a deterministic representation > > of the (relevant properties of a) filesystem tree -- because that's > > useful for their purposes. Curiously, it turns out that they can > > generally be relocated in a limited way by hash rewriting, e.g. between > > /nix/store/r8vvq9kq18pz08v249h8my6r9vs7s0n3-firefox-2.0.0.1/ > > and > > /nix/store/5lbfaxb722zpef8dhd9np843hc23ja2n-firefox-2.0.0.1/ > > . > > ( http://nixos.org/about.html ) > > Actually, Nix and Zero Install are fairly similar, though Nix tries to > use the same form of dependency handling for the whole system rather > than user-level programs - as I understand it. > > > [binaries] tend to depend on the > > exact dependencies they were built against, unless you get lucky. > > Zero Install handles the supported versions of dependencies > automatically as well. ;) It's even configurable. Also, I have read > that building software against older versions of dependencies is > _likely_ to make it work on the newer ones. See older GTK+ headers. > http://autopackage.org/download-tools.html > > > Problem with supporting installs from deb, rpm or any other package > > format is that we have to implement and support dependency tracking > > I have good news! If you were to integrate Zero Install, you would > have support for debs, RPM, autopackage and standard binaries without > having to implement anything! It also has automatic dependency > handling! > > > "download the binaries from third-party website" sounds like a bad idea > > to me. When I'm on Linux-PPC for example, it's highly unlikely that any > > third-party website (even if I trusted its binaries) would have any. > > I appreciate your concerns, however Zero Install does handle > architectures. If the third party has one for your architecture, it'll > be downloaded. If not, it will download and compile the source code. > This may happen via Compile in the near future, though this is still > simply a consideration for now. > > > does zero-install attempt to take distros out of the picture? That > > might be interesting. > > Yes, assuming you mean attempting to make cross-distribution > installation possible. > > Would it be possible to use Compile with some Autopackage tools that > are designed at making binaries portable. This, thankfully, does not > mean that you _have_ to use Autopackage with the binaries. What do you > think? > http://autopackage.org/download-tools.html
this goal is an easy one, compile is a shell script, so look for post_install and hook in the autopackage there. (or write another script packing /Programs/<Progrname> to a zero install package, because of the filesystem layout it should be fairly simple implmenting scripts like these) but iam far more interested getting zeroinstall integrated within gobo package db first... > > Thanks, > Matt > _______________________________________________ > gobolinux-devel mailing list > gobolinux-devel@lists.gobolinux.org > http://lists.gobolinux.org/mailman/listinfo/gobolinux-devel _______________________________________________ gobolinux-devel mailing list gobolinux-devel@lists.gobolinux.org http://lists.gobolinux.org/mailman/listinfo/gobolinux-devel
