goodies-management

[Nicolas Masse]

On Mon, 15 Aug 2005 12:15:49 -0700
"Brian J. Tarricone" <bjt23 at cornell.edu> wrote:

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> Benedikt Meurer wrote:
> > Jannis Pohlmann wrote:
> > 
> >>Option B)
> >>
> >>  A "real" goodies manager for listing/downloading/installing goodies
> >>  from source.
> [snip]
> 
> I haven't finished reading the entire thread, so this may be menioned
> elsewhere, but in my mind, this isn't enough.  There needs to be a
> mechanism to download and install precompiled packages (whether they're
> .debs, RPMs, Solaris pkgs, etc.).  It seems to me that the whole point
> of this goodies manager is to make it easier on newbies and "average
> joes" to learn about other available packages and install them easily.
> We can't assume they have a full set of compiler tools and the
> appropriate -devel packages installed.
> 
> This can, of course, be done in steps.  Implement the build-from-source
> option only, but design the ability to list and install binary packages
> into the XML format, something like this:
> 
> <binary-pkg os='linux' sub-os='fedora'
>       os-ver='4'>http://mirror.xfce.org/downloads/foo.rpm</binary-pkg>
> <binary-pkg os='solaris'
>       os-ver='9'>http://mirror.xfce.org/downloads/foo.local</binary-pkg>
> 
The problem here is that it will require lots of work to get all these binary packages up-to-date. In order to reduce this, we can perhaps just build some of these depending on their dependencies. (In fact I don't really like being distros-based). The installer can then fetch the binary package which fits the bests with the system he is on. 

Benedikt speak also about a way to register each goodie in the local package management systems. When it can be nice, I hope you also tought to the fact that if the user use then his local package management system to remove this goodie, the installer must also be able to see that this one was removed. (In fact I'm not a fan of distro-based packages managment systems, at least for desktops) I think the best is to keep a trace of the files who were installed so that the installer can remove them later.

> (Damned line wrapping.)  I'm sure this can be improved, that's just my
> 5-second idea.  Ideally, some OS/distro detection can be built into the
> goodies manager as well so the user doesn't have to pick their distro
> from a list.  For the far future, maybe an 'advanced' mode where the
> user can ignore the binary package and compile from source to change
> compile options (ssl vs. no ssl for mailwatch, for example).
> 

Jannis Pohlmann wrote:
 Each goodie provides a file with compile options and information about
 version, name etc.

I agree this and also think it must be done on a per goodie basis.

> Anyway, just my thoughts.  This sounds like a really cool idea, and I
> hope something useful comes out of it.  I'm afraid my python-phobia will
> preculde much development effort from me, otherwise I'd help out more
> than just throwing suggestions around ^_^.
> 
> 	-brian
> 
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