Packaging and installation

[Nicholas Petreley]

* Jeffrey Watts (watts at jayhawks.net) [001024 20:12]:
> 
> Each distribution vendor would provide a command, 'lsb_install', that
> would be able to read the file, resolve dependencies, and install the
> package either by simply extracting the files and running any scripts (on
> a Slackware-like distro), or by installing it using the native package
> manager.

And it only works if the dependencies are limited to what
LSB has defined as part of its 1.0 standard, which is
darned little.  

> This design is elegant in its simplicity.  It allows distributions to keep
> their existing package management systems (all LSB participants will have
> little difficulty working with this), is rather simple to implement --
> alien already does most of what's needed so most distributions won't have
> a hard time complying, and DOESN'T FORCE A STANDARD WHERE A STANDARD ISN'T
> CALLED FOR.  I don't like using caps, but I felt it was important to
> emphasize this.  Please don't mistake my use of caps as shouting.

But this standard is most definitely called for.  Who here
hasn't EVER been frustrated by a long string of unmet
dependencies when they knew darned well that some of them
were met on their system?  Who hasn't been frustrated by
the fact that a program complains that it can't find
libwhatever.4.2.0, and didn't know where to get that
library?  Honestly.  Anyone?  Did it matter to you at the
time whether or not that library might fall into the narrow
list of libraries covered by LSB?  

-Nick

-- 
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Nicholas Petreley   Caldera Systems - LinuxWorld/InfoWorld
nicholas at petreley.com - http://www.petreley.com - Eph 6:12
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