You should probably also take a look a Debian's packaging, the .deb.
It consists of an ar archive containing three files: one for the magic
(named debian-binary, containing "2.0"), one for the filesystem image
(filesystem.tar.gz)
On Fri, Feb 09, 2001 at 06:17:34PM -0200, Branden wrote:
> | Platform independent | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Yes.
> | Available in a wide | Yes | No | Yes |
> | range of platforms | | (Win32 +/-, | |
> | | | MacOS, VMS) | |
No -- only debian, but that includes several HW archs, and both linux and
the hurd. But source should be portable and abstracted decently.
> | Allow platform | Yes | Yes | No |
> | dependent deployment | | | |
Yes.
> | Supports binary, | Yes | Yes | No |
> | source and bytecode | | | (source?) |
Yes. Source format is .dsc (metadata) + .tar.gz (upstream) + .patch.gz
(debian patches). Keeping that would allow for many CPAN packages to be
used unmodified. Not keeping it would allow for single-file distribution.
> | Install archive | Yes | Yes | No |
> | automatically | | | (manually) |
Yes.
> | Uninstall and | Yes | Yes | No |
> | upgrade archive | | | |
Yes.
> | Install, uninstall | No | Yes | No |
> | and upgrade scripts | (possibly) | | |
Yes.
> | Run from archive | Yes | No | Yes |
No, but certianly possible. (Replace the .tar.gz files with .zips. Worse
compression but easyer to use individual files. We could do .bz2.tar or
somesuch, but that's nastyer for others to deal with.)
> | Resources | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Yes, I think. (Not certian what you mean by this.)
> | Documentation | Yes | Yes | No |
Yes.
> | Supports various | Yes | No | Yes |
> | modules per archive | | (yes) | (packages) |
No (one file, one package). This could easily be changed, though.
> | Merge many archives | Yes | No | Yes |
> | in one | | | |
No, but wouldn't be hard with small extention.
> | Usable with external | Yes | No | Yes |
> | tools (e.g. WinZip) | | | |
Yes, with a little pain (ar archive + .tar.gz files).
> | Dependencies of | Yes | Yes | No |
> | the archive | (included) | | |
Yes. Complex dependencies supported (versions between A and B), and
support for autogeneration of dependencies in many cases.
> | Build archive from | Yes | Yes | No |
> | source tree | | (external) | |
Yes.
> | Could be bundled | Yes | Probably | Maybe (if |
> | with Perl 6? | | No | we bundle |
> | | | (too big) | a JVM too) |
Yes. (I think.) (Binary of format-handling program is 110,288 -- a bit on
the big side, but not too bad.)
> | Signed archives | No | No | Yes |
No. (Source packages are signed, though.) (At present, feature is planned
for future, and shouldn't be all that hard.)
-=- James Mastros
--
"All I really want is somebody to curl up with and pretend the world is a
safe place."
AIM: theorbtwo homepage: http://www.rtweb.net/theorb/
