Re: glibc; introducing slashpackage-foreign (was: GNU Mach panic)

[Marcus Brinkmann]

At Wed, 9 Mar 2005 12:50:55 +0100,
Thomas Schwinge <schwinge-lists-gnu.org-bug-hurd@nic-nac-project.de> wrote:
> 
> [ Cc'ed to the slashpackage-foreign list
>   <URL:mailto:spf@multivac.cwru.edu>. ]
> 
> [ Replied publically with Alfred's permission. ]

This is all very well, but could you give us some context why you
posted this here in the first place?  Are you suggesting something we
should do, or what is this about?

We know the advantages of using separate directories to install
packages into, but we also know the advantages of having all packages
folded into a single directory hierarchy.  We believe what you really
want is filesystem support for a packaging system.  Packages would
then be installed in separate directories (say
/packages/PACKAGE/VERSION/) and they would be all virtually unionized
in the global root hierarchy (users could put their own configuration
on top of that).

Just having all packages in separate directories doesn't cut it for
us.  Having symbolic links like stow doesn't cut it either, as they
waste inodes, are slow to look up and don't allow full flexibility
(like automatic dependency resolution, user configuration etc).  In
the Hurd, we have the translator concept which allows for much better
solutions.

That's the story we gave for years now, and you can find more details
about this approach in the mailing list archive.

Thanks,
Marcus