* Peter Tribble <peter.tribble at gmail.com> [2007-09-29 18:08]: > Stephen, > > Thanks for the clarification. Much appreciated. > > > > So, has it indeed been decided that IPS is going to be used as the > > > packaging system? > > > > I certainly admit to talking with the developers of the various > > install sub-projects and asking them to make accommodations for image > > packaging. In all meetings so far, the IPS feature set--even in its > > prototype form--makes most things easier, and the things it currently > > complicates we know how to work around. > > I'm still not sure what its feature set is - is this summarized > anywhere? (And yes, I've read all available documentation > and a reasonable fraction of the source code...) No, there's not a good summary. I'll try to put something together--probably slides, unfortunately, to start.
(Most of the install uses of packaging get a lot easier with just dependency following and filtering on package and file attributes. Those two aspects alone eliminate special knowledge of files, collections of packages, and clusters and metaclusters. More importantly, they mean that the installer remains correct without specific attention by install developers, because the upstream developers provide the bulk of the metadata.) > > To be clear: image packaging is under development, its developers can > > be influenced and its design adjusted by well-reasoned arguments, and > > image packaging will go through ARC review and code review prior to > > integration in a consolidation. > > But, is image packaging planned to be the future packaging system, > or is it possible for some other alternative to be proposed and > integrated instead? To be honest, I don't know. I am trying to align the distributions that Sun produces and supports around use of image packaging, because my assessments of the alternatives suggest that none of them are a good solution to the problems we currently encounter producing and supporting those distributions (and their predecessors). Proposing alternatives is certainly possible; convincing people to pursue them is entirely separate--as I knew when I made my proposal. - Stephen -- sch at sun.com http://blogs.sun.com/sch/
