--pgp-sign-Multipart_Sat_Jul_14_14:18:43_2007-1
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

At Wed, 11 Jul 2007 14:03:50 -0400, matthew sporleder wrote:
Subject: Re: [HEADS UP] pkg_install pullup
>=20
> Modern operating systems share pkg formats?  I'm afraid I couldn't
> disagree more!

You can disagree all you like, but they do.  Nothing you think or say is
gong to stop a system package format from being shared between different
types of systems.  :-)

You'd also be very silly and counter-productive to disagree.  This is
yet another front where standardization can be a HUGE win!

BSD "pkg" format is already widely used, even well beyond the BSD's
themselves, thanks in large part to pkgsrc, but not due to pkgsrc
alone.

>  rpm isn't even the same between different linux's using it, and it's
> probably as close a "standard" as you're going to find.

Well I wouldn't know a whole lot about RPM formats and standards, nor
much about the other ones, but I do know that the Linux Standard Base
Specification from the Linux Foundation says that applications "should"
be provided in the RPM packaging format as defined in Maximum RPM, and
there's a plethora of information and guides along with this standard
definition at rpm.org.

Perhaps there's a lot more agreement over the standardization of the RPM
package format in the GNU/Linux world than you're aware of.  There's a
lot more than even I was aware of, that's for sure.


>  macosx has
> multiple formats within itself (.app vs bom)

Those aren't the OS X packaging formats, not really.  I'm not an expert
with OS X, but from what I can see from using it and poking around with
it there's a standard ".pkg" (and ".mpkg") format and it's shared by not
only the base OS and much of the add-on software, and it is also used
many hundreds or even thousands of third party OS X developers.  The
".pkg" format is what's handled by the "Installer" application.

Indeed not all software for OS X is distributed in their ".pkg" format.
Much is distributed as a disk image because that's often the simplest
way to use (since even disk images can have copyright notices).  An
application can often be installed by simply copying the .app directory
into /Applications and that's all you need to do -- it self initializes
itself into everyone's home directory the first time a user runs it, as
it would have to do anyway.


> In my opinion the goal of netbsd's base os pkg_install should be for
> system pkg's and pkgsrc should come with its own pkg_install called
> pkgsrc_install or something similar.

So you're saying that now even different sub-projects for the same OS
have to have N.I.H. hate for each other?  What a waste of effort!  What
a horrible mess to maintain!


>  The ability of netbsd's pkg_info
> (for example) to interact with pkgsrc is simply a bonus.

no, it is (or would be) _essential_

In fact both system packages and binary add-on packages have to share
the same /var/db/pkg database or else there's really no point to using
system packages at all (there are much simpler ways to manage what's
installed onto the base system).

--=20
						Greg A. Woods

H:+1 416 218-0098 W:+1 416 489-5852 x122 VE3TCP RoboHack <woods@robohack.ca>
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>       Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>

--pgp-sign-Multipart_Sat_Jul_14_14:18:43_2007-1
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGPfreeware 5.0i for non-commercial use
MessageID: gVogzReC/BoaORGjr+w2jQsd0HXTRKCI

iQA/AwUBRpkTg2Z9cbd4v/R/EQJI2ACeJ6yluVo7etVaZVmrBrZfwMuHEtIAoIl4
SI0UwxBr5I76+Hgu9Tl3uFmS
=uXPS
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--pgp-sign-Multipart_Sat_Jul_14_14:18:43_2007-1--