From: Matt Lawrence <matt@...>
Date: 2003-02-13T09:10:31+09:00
Subject: Re: Can we attack the 'not enough libraries' thing straight on?

On Thu, 13 Feb 2003, Hal E. Fulton wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Matt Lawrence" <matt@black-bart.net>
> > Well, I'm saying negative things.  CPAN (the Module) has given me too many
> > problems over the last year or so.  It seems to work equally badly on all
> > platforms.  I hope I'll never have to deal with it again.
> 
> Do you think the problems are (in principle) fixable if we
> implement a Ruby tool similar in spirit?

Maybe,
 
[snip]
> I can see that. Is there some kind of compromise
> possible?

Sure.
 
> For example, can we divide this into three issues?
> 1. the repository; 2. the data format; 3. the install
> tool.

Absolutely.

> Bear in mind here that while I have extensive UNIX
> background, I'm fairly Linux-ignorant.
> 
> Supposing we stored alternative packages in the RAA
> (rpm, deb, etc.) Would the respective tools be smart
> enough to go to the RAA to get the packages? Or would
> we simply download and manually run the tool?

Some of tools will need to be told where to look and are then smart enough 
to go get the packages.  Other package tools don't work quite so nicely 
over the Internet.

I suggest that #2 above be in an easy to use format that contains all of 
the necessary information for #3 to be the step that builds the various 
packages (or this could be skipped if doing a raw RAA install).  One big 
advantage of this is that different people could write the tool for each 
package format.

> Or could the RAA installer be smart enough to invoke
> the system package manager?

Bad idea.  I already run synaptic on top of apt on top of rpm on most of 
my systems.  Actually, I run apt-get on top of rpm most of the time and 
synaptic when I want to browse with a GUI.  Another layer could be a mess.

> In short, is there some not-too-unacceptable way to
> please everybody?

I hope so.

-- Matt