> What have we got against tarballs? I would regard > that (or maybe > in fact a zip or jar archive as that's more portable > and has an > established scheme for supplying metadata) as > perfectly adequate - > in fact, I would much rather have an archive I can > simply extract. > > What problems are there with simple extraction of > files that are > seen to be in need of a solution?
This is really interesting point of view! Tarball and archives will work just fine, while you do not need to maintainn and update this software. Packages and patches have tracking numbers, ability to check dependancy, versions, revisions etc. Many customers for example like to have certain fix but not everything fixed in thid package to this point of time etc. For maintenance as well as for system integrity control software need to be registered. Also it is matter or responcibility. For example if file corrupted then manufacturer not responcible for failure otherwise need to fix bug etc... However this is all required for system software. And there is a lot of user level software already which are delivered as a tar-balls and archives. Until it is not interfire with system software I do not see problems with it (and honestly can not do anything about it). I think that if such software need to be maintained as Solaris software (which also mean work with zones, upgrade, live-upgrade, flash...) or may depend on Solaris software or it is distributed as unbundled by Sun then it should be in form of packages and patches. And this require user level installation. Thanks, Vassili. This message posted from opensolaris.org
