the notion occurs to me that we are reliving the mid 80s again.
there seems to be a correspondence between the system config debacle of
today and the
software build debace of teh 80s.
at that time, there was a great flowering of tools to help with various
aspects
of software builds, ranging from prescriptive descriptions to elaborate
processes
and including lots of validation tools. LCFG seems like a
clearcase-like solution,
cfengine is more like make, and you can play with the other tools.
the lesson i draw from this is that no tool emerged dominant, except
make
(and no one pretended make was the answer), but something BIG did
emerge:
the notion (however unevenly enforced) that everything you depend is
built
and installed somehow by a recorded script/program. no random compiling
dogshit in your home directory and plopping it in /usr/bin. it may not
seem like much,
but once people accepted and bought into this, everything got easier.
it seems like we should have a similiar lesson here, but it eludes me.
----
Andrew Hume (best -> Telework) +1 732-886-1886
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Work) +1 973-360-8651
AT&T Labs - Research; member of USENIX and LOPSA
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