Re: Package format/management ramblingss

[Richard Stallman]

    What you are talking about sounds like /bin would get a translator.
    And /sbin would get another, etc.  That is where is looks like Soeren
    got confused.

My idea is that they would all use the same translator, with slightly
different parameters.

    AFAIK the idea is to have a translator set on "/", that is a union of
    all subdirectories in /package/*.  So /bin will be a union of
    /packages/emacs/bin, /packages/bash/bin, etc.

We want /bin to be that union (with handling of conflicts, renaming, etc),
but it seems to me that doing this in the root is not the right method.
We don't want packages to be able to contribute to any and all directoris
in the system--only to specific directories such as /bin, /sbin, /etc,
that are designed for such use.

    How about /package/*?  The original idea was just to fill it with
    symlinks to another directory where all packages can be found.  For
    example:

    /package/emacs -> /packages/emacs-21
    /package/bash -> /packages/bash-3.0

    If one would decide to change the version that is used you would just
    change a symlink.  Installing a new package is just untarring it and
    creating a symlink.

Yes, that's the plan.