Universal package specification

[martin f krafft]

also sprach Eugene Gorodinsky <e.gorodinsky at gmail.com> [2009.11.29.1049 +0100]:
> > Do you have any estimation how long it would take for the time
> > invested into development, deployment, and bug fixing to be
> > amortised?
> >
> No, I don't unfortunately. That would require at least calculating the
> time invested by maintainers now, and estimation of that time doesn't
> seem feasible.

Well, I think you'll need to do a cost-benefit analysis.

> > What if a package depends on vim, or apache, or rsync?
> >
> For third-party plugins and for packages that allow for
> third-party plugins there is a "base" field and a "plugins" field
> in the specification. If that is not sufficient, the package can
> be provided in a distribution-specific format as it probably is
> provided now. If that does not work we can still use tgz
> + instructions how to install. It's also possible to let package
> vendors define their own interfaces, although I'm not sure if it's
> a good idea.

I don't see the gain for any distro.

> > Symbol versioning means that each symbol has a version and your
> > application may well work with older versions of a library if the
> > symbols it uses have not been changed (and ABI changes only
> > involved e.g. new symbols).
> >
> > http://wiki.debian.org/Projects/ImprovedDpkgShlibdeps
> >
> I'm only aware of one such library - glibc. I don't know why this is
> done though. Which other libraries do this?

zlib, gcrypt, and others, in Debian at least.

> >> > All the data are maintained in a single location. They are then
> >> > cached in multiple locations. That's not duplication, IMHO.
> >> >
> >> Maintained - yes. But I meant the actual distribution
> >
> > Who cares about cached data in the "actual distribution"?
> >
> Sorry, I meant the process of distributing files. Bandwidth is still
> an issue, and that way you can download less.

Not if they are compressed, which usually they are; compression
means duplicated information takes a little to no extra space.

-- 
martin | http://madduck.net/ | http://two.sentenc.es/
 
"fools ignore complexity. pragmatics suffer it.
 some can avoid it. geniuses remove it."
                                                      -- alan perlis
 
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