On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 3:11 AM, Sriram Natarajan <Sriram.Natarajan at sun.com> wrote: > Peter > Thanks for your comments. Please see my response inline. >> >> The snmp extension requires (I believe) net-snmp. You don't call this out >> as a >> dependency. > > Thanks for catching this. I will update the draft. Net-SNMP is delivered > within SUNWsmagt package. Considering that this additional dependency is > not introducing a huge amount of download foot print or complexity to > install, I would like to consider bundling within the core package. Any > particular reason that you would rather not prefer SUNWmagt package to be > included within 'php' (meta cluster for IPS) ?
It's unnecessary, and it is definitely the sort of thing that is an optional extension that customers might not want. I would be extremely surprised if I asked to install php and it started putting things like net-snmp on my system (likewise mysql, postgres,...). (And wouldn't you want to install some MIBs as well?) >> Given that customers may choose to not install net-snmp, should the snmp >> extension be packaged separately? >> > > Please note that customers using OpenSolaris Community edition will have > all these packages installed by default. So, this should not be a problem > for them. However, Indiana (officially known as OpenSolaris 2008.05/11) > customers will use IPS meta cluster (say php) to get our packages installed > and this meta cluster can also include SUNWmagt besides other dependencies > like 'curl, tidy' etc. > > One can argue that it is nice to distribute each individual extension in a > separate package (there by reducing the dependency on core runtime package) > but it introduces a huge maintenance headache for both customers as well as > developers to ensure that every extension that a developer wants is > installed on the production system. As an administrator, one of the biggest headaches is packages with unnecessary dependencies bringing those unnecessary dependencies onto a system. Do developers want this? I've never been asked to install the snmp extension on any of my servers running php, and can't really see a typical developer system having any need for it. > However, I do agree that some customers might not need these extensions but > still be forced to install these additional packages on their system. This > might be an additional overhead. Af course, customers will always have the > choice to disable individual extensions within php core (if they wish to) by > editing corresponding ini files found under /etc/php/conf.d directory. That doesn't solve the problem of having to deal with the software brought in by the dependencies you didn't want. > Af course, I am interested in your's as well as other customers feedback on > the best thing to do for our customers. Do you forsee any issues with this > approach ? The only data point I could find is that I think fedora package it separately. -- -Peter Tribble http://www.petertribble.co.uk/ - http://ptribble.blogspot.com/
