Re: Status

[Declan Naughton]

On 6/12/06, Alfred M. Szmidt <address@hidden> wrote:
> Could you describe what you like about it? How it is different from
> apt-get/etc?

Nothing MAJOR I gotta say.

1) In apt, if you update a package you must download a whole new
package. In conary, you just download the changes. (I guess it could
be said that apt operates with packages (RPM, DEB), while conary
operates with "changesets". A changeset can be a whole new package, an
update for a package, or they can instruct to remove a package.)

2) Conary seems much easier to learn (I've never really set out to
learn apt, but I've seen some apt commands...) - there's just a few
commands ('update' being the main one - used for updating a package
and for installing a package). Conary doesn't download "list" files
from each repository, making it friendlier, but this has the
disadvantage that you gotta connect to each repository to query it for
a package. Still, it's nice not having to ensure the list files aren't
old.

(I know that there are other advantages too, but nothing that has yet
to affect me in a big way)

Like I said, nothing huge, but it is a nice package manager, I don't
think apt has anything on it...

>    If we decided to use conary we wouldn't need to develop/use/fix
>    stowfs (or decide on ANY packaging format), and we wouldn't need to
>    port apt (or create something with similar functionality).
>
> But would it allow us to use normal file-system calls to manage the
> system?  I.e., can one do: tar -C /stow -xvf ~/emacs-21.4.tgz, and
> have emacs installed?  I doubt this.

Nah, can't do that with unmodified-conary. That's the thing about translators...

Conary uses an sqlite database to store metadata/etc.

We COULD, I'm sure, modify conary to use stowfs (in the same way we
might modify apt), possibly replacing the sqlite database. The only
question is how easy/hard this would be. Apt has already been ported
to RPM, so it would probably be easier.

Except... Conary's written in python, so that might change that.

> I don't think it is fruitful to discuss any changes in how we should
> do thing at this point, stowfs already exist, it has some minor
> problems, lets fix those.  And then add the missing features.  It will
> only distract us from finishing things; and I think we have enough of
> distracting things as it is...

That's fine. Unmodified-conary is a no-go. I suppose that is only wise
at this stage.

Since we're using stowfs, what will we put on top of it? From what I
can see, modified apt would work. Modified conary would also work. And
we can always create something ourselves..

Conary isn't as mature as apt. Apt has some useful graphical tools
that conary lacks - like dselect, synaptic...

(conary's so simple it doesn't need any graphical apps :P  )

--
Declan Naughton