On Mon, 24 Mar 1997, Andrew Gillham wrote:

> I would say that if you're are going to go with some "unusual" or non-
> standard system, (pkg_* being somewhat standard) you should just look
> at RedHat's RPM and get it over with.  If someone is zealous enough to
> write a IRIX compatible install (which I have no first hand knowledge,
> just a description of a convoluted system), why not re-write the RPM
> stuff from scratch?   

Well, I was taking it as given that we'll have to write whatever from
scratch.  RPM and inst (the Irix install tool, distinct from install(1))
are good examples of systems with the features we need.

Irix's package format is useful as it provides multi-platform support
with sharing of platform independent data files, a lot of flexibility
WRT installation, and a good dependency system...

FWIW, I find it odd that no one has mentioned our _existing_ pkg_tools,
from ftp.netbsd.org, even though they are the method of choice for
installing at least one major third party package for NetBSD (XFree86)
 
--
				Jim Wise
				jim.wise@turner.com