I've been surfing OpenSolaris.org this weekend trying to read up on a
several new project (caiman, and ips, in particular,) and I'm very
excited if a little confused. I appologize if these have been asked before.
First, and this make make everything else fall into place, Is there a
specific definition of an 'image'? The term is a little vague.
The docs talk about how pkg creates or updates an image, but don't
really say what that is? (I'm guessing it's more than one thing hence
the vague term, but the limits on what it can and can't be are hard to
determine.)
Is it an ISO image? Is it similiar to what I have after I copy the
Solaris DVD onto disk for my JumpStarts? A copy of all the packages I
want to make installable, but still packaged up and not directly useable?
Or is it bootable, usable laid-out files on filesystem(s), similiar to a
BE in Live upgrade? (I'm guessing that (at least primarily) this is it?)
I read through the blogs, and I'm happy with the direction these ideas
are moving.
I welcome the removal of the build system from the packaging system.
It's one of the things I can't stand about RPM - all the hoops we have
to jump through to get RPM to build our software are rediculous,
Packaging a completed build should be a separate but easily
'connectable' process.
Removing scripts from the packages also makes sense to me. It makes
sense to me to make the metadata able to describe many of the things the
scripts would normally do, and creating flexible, highly-reusable
installer code to be shared. One of the main benefits to this is that it
provides a single (or at least fewer) code points to update as future
changes require changes to how these actions are performed.
But I have a few questions. I'll admit I'm no expert on SVR4 packaging,
but as I read through the pkg syntax that describe the files,
directories, permissions, dependencies, I kept thinking "What's new
here?" - granted I think the example of a syntax for drivers is new and
a better way to abstract something that was probably left to scripts in
the past.
Am I missing something?
In particular, the dependency declarations appear to (like SVR4) only
allow dependencies on specific packages? and no way to declare a
dependency on an API (or API version) without locking into a package
that provides that API?
What is the vision for handling cases like when packages from nVidia,
ATI, Intel, and Mesa all provide the OpenGL API? I imagine these are
mutually exclusive, installing at least some of their files under the
same names and in the same directories?
How does a developer package an OpenGL program, so that it knows it
needs an OpenGL library, but doesn't care which one?
Can the package list all as optional, and specify that 'at least 1' (or
morelikely in this case 'at most 1') must be installed?
That's it for now,
Thanks!
-Kyle
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