From: "Bashar A. Asad" <baasad@...>
Date: 2002-01-08T08:58:30+09:00
Subject: Re: APT-like RAA? (was: Re: snippet exchange)

On Monday 07 January 2002 23:25, you wrote:
> 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.
>
did you try "synaptic" IMHO it hits the sopt ;)


> > 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.