Linux standards

[david at thekramers.net (David Kramer)]

On Thu, 20 Jun 2002, Jerry Feldman wrote:

> I think this could be dealt with in a number of ways:
> 1. a standards compliant distro installs things in specific places. 
> 	This appraoch is limited, because it's lack of flexibilty,. What goes into 
> /use/local vs. /opt vs. /usr/bin.
> 2. The distro provides a mapping file. The package manager would consult 
> the mapping file, which could be an installation override of the above 
> scheme. 

That's essentially what I was talking about with my macro system.  I was 
just showing one way the package could identify what resource it needed.

But thinking about this a little more, an even harder problem to solve is 
library dependencies.  Different distributions ship with different 
kernels, glibc, and other support libraries.  Which do you compile 
against?

> But, the most serious issue is not in the implementation, but the politics. 
> The Debian people, for instance have been very adamant to accept RPM in 
> place of DEB. Deccies like setld, HP people like swinstall. Lots of very 
> sticky issues. 

That's why it would take a brand new package manager, advertised from day 
one as cross-platform/cross-distro,  Less politics.  Who cares how many 
stars are on the belly of the Sneeches when you've got stripes instead?

> Then you have companies like Installshield that have their own procedures. 

Installshield got quite a few things right.  As I mentioned previously, 
uninstalling is the big problem with tarballs.  Very few have a "make 
uninstall".

-------------------------------------------------------------------
DDDD   David Kramer                           http://thekramers.net
DK KD  "The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most
DKK D  experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; 
DK KD  we're computer professionals. We cause accidents." 
DDDD                                          -Nathaniel Borenstein