On Thu 14 Feb 2008 at 04:13PM, Danek Duvall wrote: > On Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 03:56:19PM -0800, Philip Brown wrote: > > > blastwave does not currently have a twiki package. This comes to mind, > > because of my recently having to deal with a similar software installation, > > by hand, and thinking "wouldnt it be nice if I didnt have to do this by > > hand, but I just had a package to do it for me". > > Do you really want the package to do it for you, or do you just want the > thing to work by the time you get to start using the software? > > If it's the latter, then why does it matter if the package does the work or > if the software does it when it realizes that it needs to be done (either > by being told, by looking for itself, or by starting up for the first time > after install/upgrade)? > > But certainly, the less the end-user has to do for the software to just > work, the better.
I think there's also a real distinction between "the software on disk" and "the software instance". /opt/webserver might exist and contain the binaries for 10 or 20 webserver instances. > > I will simply say, that the more popular linux distributions, take the > > opposite view: that the purpose of "the package", is to install, > > configure, and make functional, the desired software, in a completely > > automated fashion, as much as possible. > > > > THAT, is what makes linux popular!! > > There are dozens of reasons that linux is popular. That software delivery > is conflated with software configuration, if it is one at all, is, I'm > pretty sure, low on the list. UNIX has always lacked an abstraction for "I want to add another instance of <thing>". I'm unconvinced that reusing the package for that is the right path; perhaps the packaging system should interact an "factory" subsystem to create a default instance. I've not yet seen a compelling argument for creating a monolith of packaging with instance creation. Packaging should be as dumb and boring as possible. > > Ironically, i seem to recall that, just a few months ago, someone on > > this very list was complaining about "the evils of layering", and > > how tight integration was far preferable (the ZFS architecture > > example). Seems to me, that attitude would mandate "tight > > integration" of things that packagers need to do, into "the > > packaging system". "someone" == me. You have on two occasions mischaracterized my position. As I have said repeatedly, the point is that refactoring and reconsidering the constraints of a problem can yield unique value by arriving at new abstractions and new layerings. As a side point, I think we have two many layers and too many abstractions today; that's a similar but distinct issue. For those wishing to review my thoughts on this matter, I summarized them in a blog entry: http://blogs.sun.com/dp/entry/a_big_mess. Others (not me) have asserted that ZFS is a monolith. Anyone who has studied its design knows that this is false, and that it has a clean and elegantly factored set of layers. -dp -- Daniel Price - Solaris Kernel Engineering - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - blogs.sun.com/dp _______________________________________________ pkg-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/pkg-discuss
