From: Sean Middleditch <elanthis@...>
Date: 2002-01-08T05:25:11+09:00
Subject: Re: APT-like RAA? (was: Re: snippet exchange)

On Mon, 2002-01-07 at 15:10, Massimiliano Mirra wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 08, 2002 at 02:24:18AM +0900, Sean Middleditch wrote:
> > If you wanted to Keep It Simple, why have both raa-get and raa-cache?  
> 
> Yes, you're right, I was just mimicing Debian's standard tools.  I
> ordinarily use ``feta'', which is a front-end and works exactly like
> that:

Ah.  Last time I used feta, it sucked.  A lot.  ^,^  I don't think I'll
both with another apt front-end until a *really* nice GUI based on is
available.

> 
> Massimiliano

In any event, how difficult would it really be to get this RAA-apt thing
up and running?  I'd imagine that the most difficult parts will be the
actual packaging, and the installation.

The packaging format could be really simple; perhaps just a tar.gz that
contains two directories: raa and files.  raa would hold the description
file, install/remove scripts, etc.  Nothing as complicated as Debian's
changelog requirements or so on would really be required.  The files
directory would hold a number of other directories: ruby, source, so,
and data.  ruby would contain ruby source files, to stick in the site
module directory.  so would contain precompiled C extensions.  source
could contain uncompiled C extensions (which I think would be the better
idea to use) that would be compiled on installation.  data would,
obviously, have miscellaneous data.

The raa/install script would do the actual installation, solving that
problem. There could be a default simple script for package that don't
have an install script.  It would simply copy the necessary files to the
necessary places; perhaps it could contain some simple rules for
building the extensions in the files/source/ directory.  Any extensions
that needed more control could provide their own install script.

And, of course, the install script could be written in Ruby.  ~,^

In any event, you'd need a package update tool (to build the
RAAPackages.gz file), that would just read the raa/description file. 
the raa tool could easily download every RAAPackages.gz file in its
sources file.  raa show and raa install would be fairly simple.  raa
update would be just a little more complex than raa install (basically
find all upgradable packages, then call the install method for each).

I'd be interested in hacking suck a system together if I had the time...
~,^

Sean Etc.