Hi Dago, On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 2:43 PM, Dagobert Michelsen <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Jon, > > Am 06.01.2014 um 19:31 schrieb Jonathan Craig <[email protected]>: >> On Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 10:30 AM, Ben Walton via buildfarm >>> I was recently surprised when a user declined becoming a maintainer >>> because even after watching the video they thought it was still dark >>> magic. I don't have a way to gauge the skills of this person, so I >>> can't measure the person against the problem, but it was still >>> noteworthy. >>> >> >> I must admit that my interaction with the build environment leaves me 1) >> amazed >> at the flexibility and power included, 2) frustrated that every time I use it >> I find myself relearning and/or struggling to figure out the process >> as it seems >> to subtly change in ways that you'll only know if you follow the dev >> list closely and >> commit the stuff mentioned on there to memory. > > That is not good. However, I have the impression that we don’t have the > manpower > to bring it to a „stable“ state.
Unfortunately I don't have the developer chops or sufficient time to really dig into the build environment and help out on stabilizing and/or documenting. Its a fantastically cool infrastructure but remains fairly opaque to me. >> I'm also faced with moving past Solaris 10 and the only viable pkg repo is >> unixpackages.com, the commercial follow-on to sunfreeware. The pricing is >> reasonable enough and my past experience with sunfreeware leads me to >> believe the packaging quality will be good. > > Do you think there would be more users if we were to offer an IPS repo? In my opinion Solaris 10 is dead, long live Solaris 11. SVR packaging on Solaris 10 makes patching and upgrading a nightmare in our shop. This is in contrast to my experience with Solaris 11, which is not all sunshine and rainbows, but light years improvement over Solaris 10. I deeply desire an IPS style repo for a number of reasons; 1) it makes upgrades and patching a breeze, 2) I'm struggling with wrapping my mind around how to best navigate 3 packaging solutions in puppet for Solaris (SVR, IPS, pkgutil), 3) it multiples my work when writing any sort of inventory / compliance scripts as I have to take into account naming in pkgutil vs SVR vs IPS. Although I do have to wonder if my obsession with IPS is my lack of vision because while talking with the folks at unixpackages.com the salesperson indicated that they only have about 30 packages in IPS and this is largely due to lack of demand. Now, maybe if they had a full IPS repo then their demand would be higher. The other thing to tackle is the lack of integration between OpenCSW packages and native OS packages. An example of this is when using rsync to communicate between OpenCSW systems and non-OpenCSW systems. The rsync command can't find its counterpart on the off side unless you explicitly specify it on the command line. This is also true of libraries and the need to build for an OpenCSW system by specifying library locations. On the other hand, Linux distro's manage this in a more sane fashion and installing things from the fedora EPEL don't collide with the stuff in the standard RHEL repository. This is accomplished by actively managing the EPEL catalog to ensure it doesn't include any RHEL packages. The OpenCSW solution is kinda like a chroot solution. Build everything in a self contained world so dependencies only need to be considered within that world. Given the lack of a true package repository and the headaches of the patching process this was required, but is it still required in an IPS world? >> My preference is for a community supported repository solution as the >> attention span of corporations can be limited. My worst nightmare would be >> to have my eggs in a blastwave type basket and have it fold underneath me. > > Do you mean by Blastwave-type a project where only binary packages are offered > (like unixpackages now) ? My blastwave comment was more about how blastwave ceased to exist almost overnight and left people struggling to support their systems. If the folks at unixpackages.com can no longer feed their families on providing packages could they disappear as quickly? At least with a reasonable community based project (which I didn't consider blastwave to be one) you have some insight into the viability of the community. Also, having a full replica of the repository locally means that even if the community goes away you have a frozen point in time available. Jon Craig
