On Wednesday 22 July 2009 17:50:31 Hisham wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 2:27 AM, Michael Homer<mich...@gobolinux.org> wrote:
> > On Tuesday 21 July 2009 15:03:25 Hisham wrote:
> >> I really liked it. How long is the abstract supposed to be, is there a
> >> word/character limit?
> >
> > 500 words. It's about twice that now.
> >> In terms of actual information, I think everything is there. The only
> >> observation I have is that the two parts ("Background" and "Aliens")
> >> are not really linked, especially since Aliens is presented as a
> >> distro-agnostic solution -- with very little change, each of them
> >> could be a whole abstract for two different talks. :)
> >
> > To an extent, yeah. The background informs the design, so I'd like to
> > mention it, but I think the really interesting part is the Aliens side of
> > things. I will err in that direction in cutting it down.
>
> I agree, that's the novel part, so it should receive the focus. Any
> ideas for a title?
I am wondering about that too. "Alien" is a bit too incomprehensible to stand
on its own, but I'm not sure what generic term there is for all of those
package managers as a class. I've used "alien" and "third-party" in the text;
I guess "domain-specific" could cover it too. Perhaps "Aliens: Integrating
domain-specific package managers with distribution package management systems"?
It's a bit wordy.Follows the abstract as I currently intend to submit it - 403 words, emphasising the novel. Please give any feedback you have (everybody! all of it!); I will submit it early tomorrow. This paper describes a mechanism for incorporating the third-party package managers (such as LuaRocks, RubyGems, CPAN, ...) that have become increasingly common into the distribution's package management system. These package managers are very convenient for authors, often now the only obvious means of distribution for interpreted languages. However, they do not integrate with the distribution's package manager at all. The individual components may all be packaged up and installed, but the packages will inevitably be out-of-date and many will remain unpackaged entirely. Because of this, users are tempted to install their own trees for these alien package systems – either built under /usr/local or worse, allowed to pollute the main tree and create conflicts with the system package manager. In either case, there is no integration between the alien system and that provided by the distribution – they are agnostic of each other's existence, and a distribution package requiring Ruby-GTK+ cannot have their dependency satisfied by a Ruby Gem. This leads users to be forced to choose between their distribution manager and the third-party system, to the detriment of both. The Aliens system was developed to bridge this gap within GoboLinux, a distribution with an alternative filesystem hierarchy, but is not tied to any particular distribution. A third-party (“alien”) package management system can be incorporated in order to be fully integrated with the distribution's package management, with each requiring only a wrapper using a defined generic protocol. This structure should be transferable to other distributions, and such transfer is encouraged. Each alien package manager, such as LuaRocks, is given full control of a subtree in the system, here /System/Aliens/LuaRocks. The user may manipulate this using the ordinary `luarocks` command, following instructions from the library author's website or elsewhere. However, a program within the system package manager may also depend on the presence of a Lua library available through LuaRocks, as part of its ordinary package dependencies. There is no overhead of repackaging or keeping the wrapped package up-to-date with new releases. The entire Aliens subsystem is independent of the overlying distribution package manager and should be transferable into any other system, provided only that a few hooks into dependency resolution and installation can be provided. It is hoped that this may be more widely applicable than just this distribution, and it does not depend on any of the filesystem or other changes included in it. -Michael
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