Le 18 août 05 à 11:39, Gabriel Ambuehl a écrit :
Raphael Marmier wrote:
Gabriel Ambuehl wrote:
Long story short: the perfect system doesn't yet exist. OSX .app
approach comes close but is totally different paradigm and not
really
what a BSD should be after.
While strictly copying MacOSX is not an option, our dream package
management system should allow us to install an application and all
its dependencies in its own directory, possibly with its own config
space. This would be called "standalone" application, maybe.
something like:
/usr/standalone/apache-2/bin ./etc ./lib ...
The one thing I dont like about this: if a critical, widely used
library
has a bug, you can't just update the one that lives in /usr/local/lib.
Aside of that, self contained apps would be really useful.
Valid point, that's why it has to be fully managed. The package
management system knows what is installed where, can list
"standalone" applications that depends on it, and can be ordered to
upgrade all, or each in turn under the operator's supervision.
As a matter of fact, the system-wide /usr/local/ can be seen as a
special case of "standalone" app.
Of course, nothing prevents the pkg management system to build a
package once and install it every where when the same options are
required. The only difference is the additional disk space used by
multiple copies.
I think it is worth trading a bit of space for simplicity, because,
as we can judge by the current thread, simplicity is dearly needed.
I might add that such "standalone" application tree must be self-
contained, ie. include its own installed package and optional binary
packages. More duplication, but then you can archive them as one
piece that you can restore and voila, or even copy to other systems
as is.
This would answer the needs expressed many time in an acceptable
compromise:
- upgrading an app without breaking another in the process
- able to install multiple versions of a package
- allow piecemeal upgrades
- allow updating a single package
- you can have several admins each concentrating on his stuff without
the fear of breaking the colleague's stuff.
- piece of mind
Of course, rather than being fully automatic and super compex, you
have to make decision on how you "partition" your application space.
best regards
Raphael
