Date: Sun, 7 Jul 2002 11:34:57 -0400 From: Dan Moschuk <dan@FreeBSD.ORG> To: Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@ofug.org> Cc: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com>, arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Package system flaws? Message-ID: <20020707153457.GA1086@scoobysnax.jaded.net> In-Reply-To: <xzplm8nrgse.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no> References: <20020706220511.GA88651@scoobysnax.jaded.net> <3D27A296.D58FB4B4@softweyr.com> <xzplm8nrgse.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no>
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| > 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). I don't think using an archive format like zip would be a step in the right direction. If the package file format were to be redesigned, I would vote for a custom header prepended to a bziped tarball. Cheers, -Dan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message
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