On Thu, Jun 12, 2014 at 01:27:40PM +1200, Nicholas Lee via smartos-discuss wrote:
> However, even some important applications seem to have issues. For example > like recent struggle with samba (at least one issue is nss_winbind > libraries being unable to be installed in /usr/lib) and cpan. While these Software that assumes /usr is writable is inherently broken. That NSS modules don't work anywhere else is one of a whole passel of horrid bugs in NSS. The reality is that NSS needs to be rewritten. > and other application install issues may be unrelated to the GZ:/usr+/lib > readonly filesystem, it does make it harder to debug for people used to the > /standard/ way of doing it. This IS the /standard/ way of doing it. If you don't like /this/ /standard/, you're free to use a different OS which will follow a different "standard". > Most Linux distributions get around this by having package maintainers and > package tool sets. That's not a solution. The problem of third-party package version X+delta being incompatible with version X is not solved by having a person dedicated to "maintaining" the package of that third-party software. It's solved by using third-party software written by people with a clue who actually understand software architecture and give a shit about their customers' experiences with their products. Otherwise all you get is a few sentences buried in 200 pages of "release notes" telling you that oh by the way when you upgrade, your world will be broken. > Any major change in a package during an upgrade is handled by 1) > documentation via console messages, changelogs and readmes, 2) assumption > of reasonable defaults, or 3) scripted upgrades - like with mysql. pkgsrc has all of this. It's not a solution any better than it is anywhere else. Of course, again, this has absolutely nothing to do with sparse zones and everything to do with third-party software in the pkgsrc/pkgin repos. In fact, when it comes to build-to-build backward compatibility for user applications, the platform is (subjectively) about 16 orders of magnitude better than any other piece of software out there. Barring bugs, we simply do not break working user software. The platform is arguably the one "package" you can safely upgrade arbitrarily without worry. > I'm not sure how many people Joyent has working on packaging, but probably > less than "one per package" like debian/ubuntu/etc. So that type of system > is likely to not possible unless joyent want to build that community. What do you think this mailing list is for? Or the web site, wiki, and IRC channel filled with helpful people? Or the introduction of visibility into our internal bug system at http://smartos.org/bugview/? There are over 11,000 packages in our pkgsrc repo today; are you seriously suggesting we hire 11,000 people to "maintain" them? If not, then I'm forced to point out that "just build that community!" is neither helpful nor actionable. We invite and encourage people to work on packages, either for SmartOS specifically or for the greater good (pkgsrc is used on many operating systems, and as a result we do in fact leverage an *existing* community of package maintainers from many different places). In fact, there's quite a bit of this, which you can see from the GH history and issues (https://github.com/joyent/pkgsrc). If you'd like to contribute some love to a piece of software that matters to you, welcome! Telling a company that's providing all of this to you for nothing that we're somehow obligated to find a way to compel 11,000+ individuals to "maintain" third-party packages seems dubious at best. > I'm not entirely sure if there is a cure for this, but as Ian says it's a > very good reason for clear separation between a vm and the hypervisor. We'll have to agree to disagree on this technical issue. > On another note, one of the reasons why I stopped using *bsd was sourced > based packaging distribution, which forced everyone to be a package > maintainer. pkgin(1m) is not "sourced based" (sic). This criticism is meritless and based on a misunderstanding of how our system is intended to be used. There is an exact analogue between "apt-get install foo" on your favourite GNU system and "pkgin install foo" in a SmartOS zone. If you like the apt model, you should like the pkgin model. If you don't like the apt model, then you should not like the pkgin model either. ------------------------------------------- smartos-discuss Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/184463/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/184463/25769125-55cfbc00 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=25769125&id_secret=25769125-7688e9fb Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
