From owner-freebsd-hackers Sun Sep 26 13:15: 4 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from panix.com (panix.com [166.84.1.66]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2FAB014C3B for ; Sun, 26 Sep 1999 13:15:00 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from rsi@panix.com) Received: (from rsi@localhost) by panix.com (8.8.5/8.8.8/PanixU1.4) id QAA14926; Sun, 26 Sep 1999 16:14:55 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199909262014.QAA14926@panix.com> To: Tony Finch Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: A new package fetching utility, pkg_get References: <6939.938202872@localhost> <19990924140357.A71450@norn.ca.eu.org> From: Rajappa Iyer Date: 26 Sep 1999 16:14:54 -0400 Reply-To: rsi@panix.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Tony Finch writes: > Rajappa Iyer wrote: > >1. It does a terrible job at tracking dependencies, IMHO. If you > > install packages A, B and C at the same time and A depends on C, > > it's not smart enough to install C first. pkg_order | tsort should > > do the job, one would presume. > > > >2. It does an even more terrible job at fetching dependencies. Try > > installing a complex set of programs and files (e.g. gnome) and see > > how many individual components you have to fetch. Contrast with > > "cd /usr/ports/x11/gnome; make install". > > Both of those are handled by the apt-get program, and were in the past > handled by dselect (but dselect is horrid for a whole load of other > reasons). apt-get does a better job at collections, true, but in my experience still does not do a proper package ordering before installation. And if component packages have inconsistent dependencies, apt-get puts your system in a state that is hard to recover from. I've had both of these things happen to me while installing gnome. Now one can argue that this reflects a problem with the individual package rather than the infrastructure, but I feel that if a package manager deals with a bundle in a manner similar to a package, it should deal with consistency issues of the component packages. Don't get me wrong. I think that the problem that Debian package manager is trying to solve is not an easy one to solve in a completely bulletproof manner and I don't have a solution to offer offhand, either. apt-get is undoubtedly an improvement on dselect, but I think it builds on a fundamentally shaky infrastructure, IMHO. My gut feeling is that one would be better off building a super-duper package management system on top of the ports mechanism and extending the existing pkg_* tools. Regards, Rajappa -- a.k.a. Rajappa Iyer. New York, New York. We're too busy mopping the floor to turn off the faucet. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message