Hi!
On Mon, 2009-12-21 at 22:10 +0530, Sriram Narayanan wrote:
> Hello list:
>
> I'm posting the various thoughts that we've had over the past year or
> so with respect to a change in packaging. Some of these are points
> that have come up in discussions.
>
Linux package managers are generally considered in 2 categories:
1. Binary:
Debian based
RPM based.
2. Source based:
Gentoo
Slackware.
> We need a new package format because:
> - There are several serious issues (as per Moinak) that were pointed
> out about SVR4 in the ARC case for IPS.
> - There are widely known and accepted package formats from other
> distros and communities (RPM, Deb, etc) which we could leverage.
> - Formats that we could consider are RPM and Deb.
>
great.
> RPM
> RPM seems the most interesting format at the moment because:
> - popular and widely known package format
> - lots of tools (yum, smart, etc) which are RPM aware
> - active maintenance, development and feature additions.
>
RPM is good. Now a days they use LZMA compression so the file size is
small and you could fit in more software in cd or dvd. I heard that
people have been working at redhat so that when updating the existing
software, only new code or diff would be applied and no need to download
the entire package, which seems to be a good idea.
I hate the different files for different repositories model. why can't you have
a single file like sources.list in ubuntu/debian for managing repositories.
>
> Deb
> - We may explore this too
> - Nexenta have done good work here
> - Debian Community's opposition in the past is a matter of concern.
> - Need clarity on their position.
> - Need to make time and interact with the Debian community
>
One of the best pkg managers. extremely fast and user friendly. So i
would really suggest to seriously consider deb as package manager. Plus
nexenta has ported good amount of packages, so less re-work to be done.
> IPS
> We do not want to go with IPS because:
> - No point in reinventing the wheel
>
> Other formats and package managers
> - ebuilds, pacman
ebuilds system like in gentoo is also good, but slow in installation as
compilation of packages takes time. also necessity of internet
connection. people generally don't have patience especially developers.
there would be some who would like to wait and compile but it's a matter
of choice. if there is some critical time constraint work that needs to
be completed asap, i would rather prefer a binary pkg mgr, which would
just install the req. stuff lighting fast and may be configure the
services with the user friendly standard defaults.
Another point to consider is that in India, people still have limited
access to net. so it would be better if the distro has all the necessary
stuff that is needed and if not then it should be easy to just download
the stuff from the net and install it to the system.
>
> -- Sriram
Regds,
Arun.
