On 09/04/2008, Stanley A. Klein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I think you raise an interesting issue: What is a package manager?
My (very simplistic) answer is that it's whatever someone uses to manage packages. What level of functionality it has is irrelevant, as long as it suits an individual's way of working. > I don't think I ever said that Windows is broken in the area of package > management. I hope I didn't say you had - but it is an often-raised point, and it does grate on me (as by implication, it says that what I do isn't "real" package management). It's just another flavour of the old Windows vs Linux OS wars, which I don't want to participate in :-) > My own experience is that the files of Windows programs tend > to be put in a directory devoted to the program, rather than put in > directories with other files having similar purposes. At one time, the > default location in Windows for word processing files was even in a > sub-directory of the word processing program. That changed to having a > form of user home directory, but it didn't change much for the program > files themselves. Unix/Linux puts the files in specific areas of the file > system having functional commonality. One could almost say that the > Windows default approach to structuring its filesystem avoids or minimizes > the need for package management. Agreed. The minimal package manager on Windows is arguably reasonable precisely because the standard layout doesn't require much more. On the other hand, Microsoft has a bad habit of changing their "standards", and in particular Vista changes a lot of things. But that's very off-topic, so I'll avoid going into detail here. > I repeat that this issue mainly arises because Windows doesn't have the > same kind of filesystem structure (and therefore the need for package > management) that other systems have. I don't know what Windows add/remove > programs function does, but all it might do is to run the executable to > install packages and record the installation (as was previously done by > third party programs) to facilitate clean removal. Precisely. I could argue that the Linix filesystem structure is over complex, and causes the need for complex package managers, precisely because it's impossible to manually keep track of what file is owned by what package. But this way lies OS wars, so I won't make a major point of this, but just ask that people consider it as a possibility. (I believe that Mac OS X goes for an even simpler structure - applications store *everything* in the one directory, so that install/uninstall is simply a directory copy/remove. I won't comment on what that proves...) > Unless you can perform > more of the other functions I listed above, I doubt I would call > add/remove a package manager. OK. I would, though, as I don't really want much more. Later, you said: > I just don't do Windows. :-) And you've been pretty clear that you're looking for information rather than trying to explain how you think Windows should work. But many people aren't so balanced in their views, and that makes it hard to have a discussion - I'd suggest that people without Windows experience leave the Windows side to the Windows people, and accept that when they say "XXX won't work for us", that the statement is probably true. I find this whole discussion hugely confusing, because a lot of people are stating opinions about environments which it seems they don't use, or know much about. I don't know how to avoid this, but it does make it highly unlikely that any practical progress will get made. Paul. _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
