Re: apt based package dist for guile?

[rm]

On Tue, Aug 05, 2003 at 01:29:28PM -0400, Thamer Al-Harbash wrote:
> On Tue, 5 Aug 2003, Joshua Judson Rosen wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, Aug 04, 2003 at 12:31:53PM -0400, Thamer Al-Harbash wrote:
> >
> > > I'd sooner stick a needle in my eye than use a CPAN like system.
> >
> > Why is that?
> 
> Sorry for the knee jerk reaction. This isn't the forum to knock
> other packaging systems.
> 
> There are too many reasons to list. I could probably discuss the
> pros and cons for hours. Suffice it to say that for operating
> systems which you want to ship to users and keep up to date
> yourself, using a packaging system with automatic dependency
> tracking is great.

Are you refering to Debian's apt system (authomatic 'up-to-date')
or to CPAN (Perl's package archive)?
The two systems are arather different, esp. when it comes to
the "issues" you mention.

> For a programming environment this is not the case. Making this
> inpersonal, automatic, and "always up to date" is not necessarily
> good. You go from shipping a really nice Scheme
> interpreter/library to shipping a virtual plastform.
> 
> My own feeling is that there should be a maintainer or two that
> keeps track of stable guile software and keep a directory up to
> date. 

The idea of 'stable' is rather what apt tries. You do _not_ get
software that is "up to date" but rather a stable snapshot, that
sometimes can be (and often is) rather outdated (but stable).
CPAN is just the other half of your suggestion: a list/directory of 
stable packages/modules (and by no means a platform).

> This process can also be automated by having programmers
> submit their projects for listing. We already have freshmeat, and
> the Free Software Directory. These two directories can serve this
> purpose well enough as it is.

The one tempting thing about CPAN (and apt, here's where they meet)
is the simple, unified build/install process -- either 'apt-get install foo'
or CPAN's 'download / perl Makefile.PL / make / make install' process.
[or, from the developer's side: a build system that helps to create
 a .dpkg or even a module that wraps the build/install process like
 MakeMaker.pm]

 Ralf Mattes

> -- 
> Thamer Al-Harbash
> GPG Key fingerprint: D7F3 1E3B F329 8DD5 FAE3  03B1 A663 E359 D686 AA1F
>    "to understand recursion first one must understand recursion"
> 
> 
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