[arc-discuss] [sysadmin-discuss] [install-discuss]

[Richard L. Hamilton]

> Bruce Rothermal wrote:
> > Dave Miner wrote:
> >> Bruce Rothermal wrote:
> >>   
> >>> I don't think anybody is saying that there is
> anything wrong with 
> >>> pkg-get. But I don't think there is anything
> wrong with vi. Whats wrong 
> >>> with having 10 different package management
> systems if they all work. 
> >>> Thats 10 different ways that people can then
> start using Solaris and 
> >>> Sun. They're not asking you to do the work they
> are asking us how can we 
> >>> do the work to add to Solaris and make it more
> theirs. People want to be 
> >>> part of Solaris.
> >>>
> >>>     
> >> I wouldn't view it as quite such a benign
> situation.  There's a reason 
> >> why most distributions settle on one packaging
> system.
> >>
> >> Providing multiple packaging systems for a
> particular set of 
> >> functionality involves a cost to the development,
> testing, and support 
> >> associated with it.  Interacting with multiple
> packaging systems also 
> >> generally will impose a cost on users, because
> while they may work 
> >> individually, they rarely do so in a collective
> sense, and that's a big 
> >> part of the user's definition of "work".
> >>
> >>   
> > But each group should carry the burden of their own
> development and 
> > testing. IPS should not carry the burden of some
> other packaging system. 
> > If we don't promote diversity we may as well all
> just start running 
> > Windows and using Microsoft Update.
> 
> Packaging is not a leaf node in the system where
> changing it impacts 
> almost nobody else.  Supporting multiple packaging
> systems is close to 
> the same impact throughout a development and user
> space as supporting 
> multiple incompatible kernels, compilers, or libc's.
>  Yeah, you can do 
> ll of those things, but everyone pays.
> 
> Dave

I certainly don't think Sun ought to support multiple packaging systems
(except in the sense of keeping SVR4 pkg compatibility for some time after
switching to anything new); as a consumer, I don't think I'd like to deal with
that.

However, to the extent that build systems can be mostly package system
agnostic (or at least that one can ignore packaging functionality in the
build system and do the packaging using something external), there's no
reason for them to stand in the way of some other distro doing its own
thing.

As for compatibility, while packaging is certainly part of it, I think perhaps
more people think in terms of actual binary compatibility (less hard-coded
pkgadd commands and such) than package-level or admin
keystroke-for-keystroke compatibility.   So I think this all boils  down to
the discussion of what may be done to allow some limited permissable
use of the OpenSolaris trademark.  Personally, I think compatibility may
need to be (a) clearly defined, but also (b) defined in terms of
categories or components, where some are mandatory for certain terms
to be used, and others are optional but must be clearly shown if not
compatible.  Or something like that...
 
 
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