From: kero@...38c.nl (Kero van Gelder)
Date: 2002-01-12T20:46:00+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] rpkg 0.1 (long!)


>> Cool. What's wrong with dpkg? Don't tell me RH ppl do not have
>> dpkg. They don't have rpkg, either.
>
>I suppose nothing is wrong with dpkg, provided that it runs on
>Windows, Mac, and all other platforms Ruby runs on, and that we can
>extend its C source as easily as we would with rpkg when we're adding
>Ruby-specific features.

OK, I never tried compiling dpkg for Windows (heck, I don't use Windows
at all), but it can not be that hard? Given Debians philosophy, the
source must be available somewhere...

>Naming conventions are identical to dpkg, except that all dots but the
>one preceding the extension are converted to underscores to avoid problems
>under Windows.

OK. Though it seems to me dashes would be better.

>> Whatever you do:
>>  - allow for cross packaging (I build a few packages for iPAQ:
>>    arm(v4l) on my PC; I already replicated some helper scripts).
>
>I am not sure about what you mean with cross packaging.  If it is just
>producing packages on a platform and installing them on a different
>one, yes, of course it allows that, that's the whole point of the
>story after all. ;-)

Yes.

>>  - Allow for two packages that are exactly the same, but one used by
>>    ruby 1.6 and the other by 1.7 (version "1.7:moduleversion-andmore"
>>    seems a candidate; this colon is in use with dpkg to distinguish
>>    between different glibc versions, but I do not know it exact
>>    semantics, or rather, which package will be chosen if one of them
>>    does not provide the number. This can not be an afterthought, this
>>    must be designed.)
>
>If two packages are exactly the same, why should there be two of them
>in the first place?
>
>I assume that you mean two packages with the same name but tailored to
>different interpreters/other dependencies.  Still I cannot see what
>you refer to.  Care to elaborate a bit?

The Ruby libraries are different. Thus, the shared library that is
constructed for the package may be different. I've given serious thought
to using 1.7's allocate().
This would have given a package that would not have run on 1.6.
I am not sure packages can be created for 1.6 that do not run on
1.7, but I expect it will happen once 1.8 is out, or 2.0.

There will be/is plain Ruby that is not backward compatible, as
well as forward compatible.

Furthermore, Ruby 1.6 will open neither Ruby files nor shared libraries
in lib/ruby/1.7


At this moment, I have more trouble with `make install` than with
packaging, because my Ruby on PC (1.7.2) tries to put the arm libraries
in the 1.7 i386 directory instead of the 1.6 armv4l.


>This is what I've seen in the Debian database, I don't know how
>relevant it is:
>
>ruby-examples - Examples for the scripting language Ruby
>ruby1.7-examples - Examples for the scripting language Ruby.
>ruby - An interpreter of object-oriented scripting language Ruby
>ruby1.7 - An interpreter of object-oriented scripting language Ruby.

That is another way of making two different versions. It implies
Depends: ruby1.7  instead of  Depends: ruby (>=1.7:2)

That is what was done going from libc5 to libc6, too.

>> PS: what is wrong with dpkg for iPAQ, you might ask. Good
>> question. Intimate uses it, but familiar doesn't. The main reason is
>> limited storage space: 16 MB flash should not be wasted on big
>> databases.
>
>Does that mean that a small database could still be a choice, or that
>you'd rather rely exclusively on a remote service?  Both can be
>accomplished, either by having rpkg-scanpackages produce a stripped
>database along with the big one on the repository, or by having rapt
>send out search/show/install rpc's to a service on the repository
>server, probably with little modification.

A small database can definitely be a choice. ipkg uses a database
that is quite similar to dpkgs, but since it contains hundred packages
instead of thousands, it is a lot smaller.

Bye,
Kero.

+--- Kero ------------------------------ kero@chello.nl ---+
|  Don't split your mentality without thinking twice       |
|                          Proud like a God -- Guano Apes  |
+--- M38c ------- http://members.chello.nl/~k.vangelder ---+