Dave Miner wrote:
> Peter Tribble wrote:
>> On Wed, 2006-05-31 at 23:56, Dave Miner wrote:
>>> First, I'll acknowledge that the outline as written certainly
>>> accomplishes the basic requirement of providing a replacement for
>>> usage of tarballs or other relatively unstructured software
>>> distribution mechanisms.
>>
>> 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?
>>
>
> I don't have a problem with tarballs, James or someone else can explain
> why they don't meet the requirements they've identified.
>
This one is not met by using tarballs.
- Remove barrier to using native packaging on Solaris. Many
software vendors spend effort producing parallel distributions
not based on Solaris packages, or do not produce package-based
distributions at all. This requires the product group to re-invent
technology already available in the packaging tools.
I will expand on this for the community. We have a large number of
products in JES and across the company who are releasing the same
software in two formats on Solaris, zip distros and packages. This is
pretty costly to Sun from a development, testing, support, patching,
update and sustaining perspective. It also adds confusion to our
customers as well. They may now have to now try to manage those
duplicate distributions.
I can see clearly how this is making this situation better:
- Common distributions for testing, development, deployment.
- Pkg database
- Common patch format to allow updates
- Backout of pkgs and patches
I have seen it argued that one issue with the proposal is that now the
"Adminstrator" has lost control of what's installed on users systems.
With zip distros they have less control don't they? The current
customers we have using these distros haven't seemed to mind too much
about them until now.
Don't get me wrong, I do believe that better software management tools
are needed for Solaris, including in the packaging area. However I don't
believe that this proposal is the wagon that those should be hitched.
Thanks,
Matt
