Eric Ray wrote:
> 
> Dave Miner wrote:
>> Eric Ray wrote:
>>>>>> For minimal changes, I do think it'd be nice to be able to get there
>>>>>> without having to overhaul packages manually.
>>>>>>
>>>> I will stand by my assertion that branding needs to be consumed by 
>>>> the Distro Constructor as one or more packages.  That doesn't mean 
>>>> they have to be hard to construct; to the contrary, I would expect a 
>>>> tool to be built or imported which will make it easy to do so (and I 
>>>> expect that construction of packages will be much easier under the 
>>>> new system than the existing SVR4 process, anyway).  Whether that 
>>>> tool is something the Distro Constructor project should include is a 
>>>> fair question to discuss, but let us agree that packages are the 
>>>> basic unit of delivery.
>>>>
>>>> Dave
>>> I can certainly agree to packages as the basic unit of delivery.
>>>
>>> But I do think that including this functionality as part of DC makes
>>> a lot of sense...
>>>
>>> SUNWbranding-override.pkg ;-)
>>>
>> What if I just want to create custom branding to use on my own desktop? 
>>  From that perspective it doesn't seem to fit into DC at all.
>>
> 
> Sure that's different. That's not the point.
> 

It's entirely the point.  There are multiple needs to do essentially the 
same thing.

> Suppose I want to construct my own distribution of OpenSolaris
> as a delivery vehicle for my FOO software (which doesn't use
> Solaris packaging). Does it really make sense to have me go off and
> have to learn Solaris packaging, or should DC just make it
> easy to do that?
> 

I don't believe I said anything about requiring such a hypothetical 
developer to know anything about packaging.  Having a tool which hides 
that is fine if there's a constituency which it would serve.

> I understand your concern about scope creep, but so far, 100% of
> the people I've talked with about this have IMMEDIATELY asked
> about rebranding or placing stuff on the desktop. I think it's
> a legit need for this audience.
> 

It's not a matter of scope creep, but ensuring that the right people own 
solving a problem.  The distro constructor shouldn't, IMHO, know 
anything about the mechanics of branding a desktop, nor should the 
functionality to do so be specific to it.  APOC, for example, provides 
some of this sort of thing in a run-time context for enterprise 
environments.  Does it already have a tool for generating such things? 
If not, should it?  Understanding the answers to those sorts of 
questions seems important context to this discussion.

Are there other things from those discussions that would be relevant to 
capture (if we can't get them to engage here directly, which would be 
much preferred)?  I'd like more understanding of the problems they're 
wanting to solve, rather than just feature requests without context.

Dave

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