Subject: Re: PROPOSAL: NetBSD System Packages (LONG)
To: Hubert Feyrer <feyrer@rfhs8012.fh-regensburg.de>
From: Jim Wise <jwise@unicast.com>
List: tech-install
Date: 10/01/1998 11:47:31
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On Thu, 1 Oct 1998, Hubert Feyrer wrote:

>You're making the same mistake as Jonathan & Jim here: just because the
>existing tools don't provide a feature doesn't mean the underlying data
>structure doesn't provide it. 

Fill me in Hubert:  how do our current package tools (data formats if
not existing tools) fill the requirement of a few large `containers'
which can be downloaded and verified by the user before they even have a
NetBSD box up and running?  This is the most important functionality of
the proposed package sets, as far as I am concerned, and is a very real
requirement for whatever format we end up using to do initial installs
of NetBSD.  If this can be done within (or by extension to) the existing
package system, that would be wonderful.  meta-pkgs, as they exist now,
don't cut it, though.

>Like I just wrote in answer to a private mail to Jonathan: 
>Just because our current pkg_* tools are not there yet doesn't mean we
>can't get them there. To re-invent things will lead to redundant work and
>extra worries once the two things will be merged again (if ever possible). 

This isn't reinvention.  A package set is just that -- a container for a
group of packages which will be installed using the existing package
tools.

- -- 
				Jim Wise
				jwise@unicast.com


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