On Thu, 2006-02-16 at 19:31, Dave Miner wrote: > Peter Tribble wrote: ... > > I've been wondering about this proposal for a while, and the > > proposed community - certainly in terms of the original proposal > > back on Jan 31st - doesn't work for me. Which is worrying, > > because - being a sysadmin - the whole packaging, patching, and > > installation process is important to me and something I want to > > see done well. > > > > The focus seems to be on "how to put together a distribution > > using Solaris packages". While this information needs to be > > available it's largely a set of existing rules that need to > > be published rather than a community, and it's pretty specific > > to the Solaris package tools. What about distributions that > > choose to use other packaging systems? They don't seem to > > fit in naturally. So how to broaden the scope to include > > all distributions and their installation management schemes? > > > > Rob's original wording somewhat reflects where he works in Sun, and thus > his primary perspective, but there is no intention to make this specific > to the Solaris packaging tools or distribution rules, though they'd make > up some significant content. I'd be quite happy for this to include > discussions or projects around using dpkg, rpm, or whatever with > OpenSolaris. So what do you suggest would make that clear in the scope?
I think we just have to make it clear that the community (of whatever name) is to encourage discussions and development of any packaging or software installation technologies on OpenSolaris. (And, indeed, ways to maintain compatibility and interoperability between systems.) The neutrality towards other systems didn't come through in the original proposal. > > The other component of the proposal is to create a home for > > the Solaris packaging tools. Yes, I want these tools, and > > they need a home, but they strike me as being closer to a > > project that a community. > > That's true, I guess, looking at it in the same way as the desktop > community providing a home for the Gnome/JDS project, though they seem > to have chosen to view that as a sub-community for some reason. But as > Jim Carlson noted, what's being released doesn't really represent a > project itself, it's a codebase. I expect we would charter a number of > projects out of this community to improve the software management > experience for OpenSolaris. I don't want to get too hung up on the difference between a project and a community (although a project has a source code repository whereas a community doesn't - so a codebase => project) but I do see the tools as being some sort of subgroup of the overall packaging community. > > What I think i'm muddle-headedly staggering towards is a setup > > with a broader "Install" community and a narrower "Solaris > > Package Software" project. Or maybe a "Distributions" > > community, with an even broader scope, with the publishing of > > the Solaris distribution rules and the SVR4 software tools > > being projects underneath that. > > > > I'm not too keen on a "Distributions" community, for the reasons Jim > noted - it seems to promote the semantic quagmire where people start > thinking of OpenSolaris as a distribution when it's not. Naming it > "Installation and Packaging", where "packaging" is meant in the meta > sense I mention above, seems like it keeps us centered on technology. Hm. Yes. I was thinking in terms of "how to build one" rather than "what is or isn't", but yes I can see the semantic mess that could develop. So, top level community "Installation and Packaging", with an SVR4 tools project? (A project if only because it's more of a match and easier to set up.) I'll shut up now and go back to my Java code to parse /var/sadm/install/contents (which is using truly excessive amounts of memory and keeling over). -- -Peter Tribble L.I.S., University of Hertfordshire - http://www.herts.ac.uk/ http://www.petertribble.co.uk/ - http://ptribble.blogspot.com/ _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
