Peter Tribble wrote: > It isn't at all clear to me that any answer other than 'use tarballs' > is really appropriate here. I've done quite a lot of this sort of > thing, and tarballs (or, more generally, a simple archive I can extract) > is exactly what I want. I want to try a new app *now*. I want to be > able to try different versions, compile it myself with different > options, throw the whole lot away and start over. The last thing > I want is any software management framework getting in the way.
One reason is that for the teams producing the bits there is a cost to packaging them up. For some products/projects they must deliver in the system package format (pkgadd or rpm or whatever the system package format is). Having to also deliver (and constantly redeliver) multiple bundles costs. This is one reason to only deliver in the system package format and have that be installable both for "production use" and for "evaluation"/"development". I know of projects inside Sun that have complaints about this resource addition. -- Darren J Moffat
