On Fri, Feb 09, 2001 at 06:46:26PM -0200, Branden wrote:
> Jarkko Hietaniemi wrote:
> > Whatever we do I would much prefer being package format agnostic
> > instead of tying ourselves too tightly with some single format.
> >
>
> Any ideas on how to do that? Without breaking requirements?
There isn't a software problem another abstraction layer can't fix...
Design and implement a package format independent API that has calls
like %files = $package->getfiles(), $package->getfile($file),
$package->gettotalsize(), $package->dependencies(),
$package->install(), $package->uninstall(), and at lower levels
(non-casual-user) calls like guessformat($file). Yes, this would be
harder than sticking with one format, but so much more flexible.
An API and its implementation would be very beneficial also in
installing other software than just Perl.
> problems (like `oh! I don't have bzip2 and the developper only supplied a
> bzip2 version of the archive', or `oh! I'll have to do zip, tgz, bzip2,
> whatever3 versions of the same thing only to satisfy users that use
> different formats').
And how is this different from 'oh! I don't have unzip'?
> I think we should go for `standard' rather than `flexible' on this one.
As I said on this I disagree.
I have no problem with in the first implementation round doing just zip:
what I abhor is the idea of hardwiring the zip assumption deeply into
our design.
> Of course we still can change the file format, if someone isn't happy about
> zip. That's the advantage of discussing it before making it: it's not here
> for we to regret about it...
>
> - Branden
--
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# There is this special biologist word we use for 'stable'.
# It is 'dead'. -- Jack Cohen
