On Fri, May 18, 2007 at 01:40:11PM -0500, Steve Stallion wrote: > On 5/18/07, Brian Gupta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >Why don't we first focus on those applications that don't exist in > >Solaris currently? Also, in parallel, we should work on an updated > >packaging format. > > Whoa... slow down Tiger. > > SVR4 is by far a more complete and cohesive packaging format than is > available on any other UNIX or Linux distribution. Essentially there > is no technical merit in tossing SVR4 packaging - not by a long shot.
What? Can you please compare what you think makes it complete? I mean explain what you mean by the format? This assertion is hard to swallow without your explaining what your experience is and what leads you to say this. > That said, SVR4 could certainly use a little help with respect to > usability (pkgadd -D anyone?). > > This was posted earlier, but please take an indepth look into the > packaging guide and see what is provided out of the box - I think you > will agree this beats the pants off of RPM, .deb, and POTS (plain old > tarballs). I don't see any really strong recommendations for the format there. 61-characters for the NAME, population of dependencies left up to the developer and no structure given to express dependancies, 256 characters for DESC, VERSION is defined as X.Y[.Z] and REV= is similarly limited. There's the 16-character CATEGORY, which isn't enough to allow people to create readable categories. There is a lot of cruft, like HOTLINE, ULIMIT, ORDER, etc. Why there is even a MAXINST parameter is a puzzle to me. There aren't good installation and removal script hooks. With equivelants of rpm's %pre and %post macros things like ISTATES and RSTATES could be done away with easily (as well as MAXINST, come to think of it). Why are SUNW_OBSOLETES, SUNW_REQUIRES, and SUNW_INCOMPAT restricted to patches? After going over that document, which expands on some of the packaging work on solaris I've done in the past, I've got to say that it's a pretty pale shadow of rpm and deb, and a scratch above POTS. The philosophy of using patches means that the provisions for patches is a big advantage, but except for that I'd have to give it a D. -Peter -- The 5 year plan: In five years we'll make up another plan. Or just re-use this one. _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
