[indiana-discuss] "no scripting zone" and isaexec(3C) == architectural

[Nicolas Williams]

On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 10:32:09PM +0200, Bernd Schemmer wrote:
> >>Thus, not only is there no practical way to emulate SVR4 preinstall/
> >>preremove/checkinstall pkg scripting with IPS, there's no reason to.
> 
> That's the reason why I don't like the new approach: 
> 
> "Someone" decided what is useful and what not and we have to live with 
> it ...

Reasons were given.  You're not arguing the technical details.  Instead
you seem unhappy with how the decision was made (without your input, I
suppose).  That's not a good enough argument.

> When I compare IPS with SVR4 I would call SVR4 "freedom to implement the 
> best solution for your situation even if Sun never thought that it might 
> be used this way"  and IPS "you're only allowed to do what we think is 
> useful".

I'd characterize it differently.  SVR4 packaging lets you run arbitrary
code during pkg install, and the tools layered on top of SVR4 packaging
created a plethora of contexts where said code must be able to run, and
this creatd an unmanageable situation.  IPS gives you all sorts of
freedoms, but only in a single context: running image context, and IPS
greatly constrains what can be done in other contexts.

> Nevertheless I think IPS is useful for Solaris running on a desktop 
> computer (I'm using OpenSolaris on my Thinkpad for day-to-day usage and 
> I'm very satisfied with Solaris and IPS there) but I don't think this is 
> the right way to go for server in production.

I believe IPS + AI probably scales to the enterprise _now_.  But I
believe IPS is not ready for enterprise use in one sense: customers are
not yet ready to use IPS packaging to do the things they are used to
doing with SVR4, and we could make that transition easier.  For example,
a simple tool to create an SMF actuator from a developer-provided script
would be nice.  It's possible that there may yet be a use for my
SVR4->IPS CAS/post* script migration tool.

Nico
--