Date: 07 Jul 2002 12:09:05 +0200 From: Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@ofug.org> To: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> Cc: Dan Moschuk <dan@freebsd.org>, arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Package system flaws? Message-ID: <xzplm8nrgse.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no> In-Reply-To: <3D27A296.D58FB4B4@softweyr.com> References: <20020706220511.GA88651@scoobysnax.jaded.net> <3D27A296.D58FB4B4@softweyr.com>
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Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> writes: > Dan Moschuk wrote: > > Where can we improve? > In all of the above areas, plus all the ones we haven't addressed yet. *grin* One thing we could improve a lot is the package file format. We currently use gzipped tarballs, which have to be completely unpacked before processing can begin. One improvement we can make is to use an archive format such as zip that allows us to extract individual files quickly, so we can extract the metadata and check dependencies etc. without unpacking the entire package. This would save both time and space (the current system can fail if the temp directory doesn't have room for the unpacked package, even if the installation directory has room to spare). A further improvement is to use a custom archive format that always stores the metadata at the beginning of the archive so we can install packages from the net without having to download and store them locally first (zip isn't suitable for this as it stores the content directory at the end of the archive, and the files within the archive can appear in any order). DES -- Dag-Erling Smorgrav - des@ofug.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message
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