On Mon, 19 Jul 1999, Brent Fulgham wrote: [nice synopsis of how dpkg and friends work removed]
# The point of all this is that it should be feasible to formalize the use of # this tool as something an end-user might be able to use. The "pristine # source + Debian diff" is very similar sounding (to me) to the BSD "source + # port" concept. # # So, there are some issues: # # 1. Would a more "mainstream" BSD user really care about using the source to # build a package on his own system? If a binary package is available, I # suspect the average "user" will NOT care to compile software, unless there # is a substantial benefit in doing so (as in better performance, lower # resource usage, etc.) If so, then providing BSD binaries would be a good # thing. Don't know for sure. We should aim to provide both, because each user has diferent needs. FWIW FreeBSD has both now, though they could use some tweaks. pkgadd and sysinstall are two ways to install packages both on the user's machine or over the wire. The Ports Collection tree is the "source" people like Satoshi, Justin, Garrett, and myself use to build the packages. Since the tree is available to everyone many of the more accomplished hacker types took to using the tools we have for building them ourselves. What started out as a tool for us, ended up being used by everyone and they forgot about sysinstall and pkgadd. :) # 2. Would a more "advanced" BSD user really care about having the source for # more than a handful of packages on her system? If the source is available # to anyone who cares for it, does the source need to be the "standard" method # of distribution? Not necessarily the standard. The average user I would think would be happier with a package. The big reason for building from source is that a number of knobs can usually be tweaked to include/exclude features that she may want. The standard package (and .deb I would assume) is what we feel is useful to most folks. Or does a single .deb allow the user to turn on/off knobs transparently in the case where binaries either have the support or not (which would require having a binary for each possible permutation of knobs)? # 3. If it is determined that having the raw source is very desirable for # certain packages, it should be possible to use the dpkg-source tool as a # basis for dpkg to handle the install and build of packages. Our # autobuilders (at Debian) do this already. This would be my preferred mode if and until I get more familiar with dpkg and friends. Then again I like digging in the muck because bit twiddling is what I do for fun and a career. :) This does remind me of a question that I had though. You mentioned having a new version arrive at an ftp site. How do you handle keeping track of older versions? Do you use some form of source code control? It would seem from the description you provided that aside from the distribution's tarball from the "upstream provider" everything else is plain text of some form or another. -steve
