On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 09:44:35AM -0700, Stephen Hahn wrote: > * Venky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2008-05-15 04:36]: > > On Wed, May 14, 2008 at 09:55:02AM -0700, Stephen Hahn wrote: > > > > Let me try and re-state my point in an unambiguous manner -- if > > > > a project is open source, the only format relevant to a distribution > > > > maintainer would be source code. If there is an exception to this > > > > rule, I am not aware of it. > > > > > > (It's somewhat generous to call a tautology a rule.) > > > > Not really. There are reasons why distribution maintainers prefer > > building from source, and that is to ensure quality and also because > > each distribution's requirements differ. We do that with the SFW > > consolidation. The default install prefix of most GNU applications > > is /usr/local and we switch that to /usr or /usr/gnu. > > I was being polite. Let me go further and state that a solution that > would somehow prefer software for which the source code was available is > certainly incomplete or probably also incorrect.
That's totally different from what I was trying to say. I know of no package manager which cannot handle closed source applications right now (including Gentoo's predominantly source-based portage system), so that would not even be a tautology, let alone a rule. My point was it *if* there is source code available for a package, that will be the preferred medium from a distribution maintainer's perspective. A package manager which prefers software for which source code is available is incomplete, true. But every package manager around prefers building its own packages from source code to using pre-built binaries, given a choice. > > > As has been > > > stated before, pkg(5) does not contain a build system by design--as a > > > result, the practical problem of absorbing components from package > > > publishers using both legacy packages and proto areas has been very > > > straightforward. > > > > True, though I'd suspect a lot of it is because we have been > > depending on the standardized build procedures currently used to > > build the SVR4 packages. If we had to build from source all the > > packages we distribute currently via pkg.opensolaris.org, the lack > > of a standard build system would be felt more acutely. > > If you believe that we could convince all of the current System V > package providers to just switch over directly, that's... interesting. Again, totally different from what I was trying to say. I do not believe that current System V package providers need to switch to anything else. In fact, my point was that I like the status quo, and the fact that we have (mostly) standardized build procedures for producing System V packages, and that I believe the transition from SVR4 to IPS has been smooth precisely because we have System V package providers with standardized, repeatable build procedures. Disparate build systems delivering packages without support from pkg(5) work right now because they are all coming from within Sun and we can be reasonably assured of the quality. That is the reason why we are not forced to re-build the packages ourselves. Assuming we plan to start allowing people outside Sun to publish packages eventually, we will need some quality control measures in place. And this will, IMO, boil down to having trusted package maintainers who will (assuming the source is available) build the packages and upload them. These maintainers will have to set up build environments specific to each package -- which is fine -- somebody has to do it. The problem is that anybody who wants to replicate this package build will have to go through the process of figuring out the build environment all over again because IPS does not have a way currently of recording the steps required to setup and run the build. (pkgbuild-pkg(5) would go a long way towards solving this, by the way. I agree that there is no real reason why build *has* to be part of the packaging system.) Having a package manager support build systems does not mean it will dictate the build procedure to the package. I know of no package manager that does that. The packages continue being built the way they were designed by the developer -- be it autotools, ant, imake, whatever. All that the package manager does is make it easy for someone else to replicate the build by recording these steps. The primary consumer of a packaging system (not counting end users who use it to install packages) are distribution maintainers and not the developers. And IPS in its current state is more developer-friendly than maintainer-friendly. > Of course, since we know that we don't have unencumbered access to > source for many of them, the scenario is irrelevant. True, and I expect any package management system to be able to handle closed source packages too, so that was not something I was contesting at any point of time. > I will let you have the last word, of course. :) Anyway, this thread is rapidly approaching the point where it stops being of any value whatsoever, so I guess I'll shut up now. Venky. -- One hundred thousand lemmings can't be wrong. _______________________________________________ pkg-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/pkg-discuss
