Peter Tribble wrote: > > Which is that adding modules to bring in more functionality > adds additional dependencies. In particular, adding database > support implies a run-time dependency on the libraries > associated with that database, which means that any > database module you add requires that that database (the > runtime, at least) be installed on all systems. Which gets worse > as you add support for more database engines.
Definitely. My desire over time is to move to a much more modular packaging such as in e.g. debian where every module with significant dependencies is delivered by its own package any you can pick the ones you need. It'll be a staged transition though. The driver of the immediate-term work (this month) is still the next SXDE release which is still being delivered via the ol'dump-truck-full-of-packages approach so the finer-grained dependencies are not as painful. As IPS matures a bit and we move fully to that world, this will definitely need to change. (IPS' a la carte packages are exposing other problems as well, not just dependencies.. for instance packages can't yet deliver users/groups/etc which they will have to do for IPS model to really work and the whole consolidation idea will hopefully go away before too long. But.. baby steps.) -- Jyri J. Virkki - jyri.virkki at sun.com - Sun Microsystems
