Bruce Rothermal wrote: > Dave Miner wrote: >> Bruce Rothermal wrote: >> >>> I don't think anybody is saying that there is anything wrong with >>> pkg-get. But I don't think there is anything wrong with vi. Whats wrong >>> with having 10 different package management systems if they all work. >>> Thats 10 different ways that people can then start using Solaris and >>> Sun. They're not asking you to do the work they are asking us how can we >>> do the work to add to Solaris and make it more theirs. People want to be >>> part of Solaris. >>> >>> >> I wouldn't view it as quite such a benign situation. There's a reason >> why most distributions settle on one packaging system. >> >> Providing multiple packaging systems for a particular set of >> functionality involves a cost to the development, testing, and support >> associated with it. Interacting with multiple packaging systems also >> generally will impose a cost on users, because while they may work >> individually, they rarely do so in a collective sense, and that's a big >> part of the user's definition of "work". >> >> > But each group should carry the burden of their own development and > testing. IPS should not carry the burden of some other packaging system. > If we don't promote diversity we may as well all just start running > Windows and using Microsoft Update.
Packaging is not a leaf node in the system where changing it impacts almost nobody else. Supporting multiple packaging systems is close to the same impact throughout a development and user space as supporting multiple incompatible kernels, compilers, or libc's. Yeah, you can do all of those things, but everyone pays. Dave
