Re: Status

[pancake]

>    I mean, which is the difference between those package systems and
>    pkgsrc?
> 
> pkgsrc is a package builder.

when people talks about pkgsrc it talks about the whole pkgsrc and the
bootstrap (pkg_*) and this is a complete package manager. It handles
dependencies, reverse deps, versino control, views, use-like flags, etc.

>    The idea of stut is to merge pkgsrc + stow.
> 
> pkgsrc is a build system, stow is a package manager.  How would you
> merge such two completely and vastly different beasts?

If you join two different things you usually get something that
fills the gaps of the other.

pkgsrc allows us to build binary packages for the GNU/HURD, it have a
large pool of packages and we like the aim to make things portable, so
help on pkgsrc-hurd will be a good way to join efforts to make software
more portable.

BTW I understand that GNU people doesn't want to spend time on this
kind of things, So, the idea is that pkgsrc allows us to create binary
packages, and stow to make't visibles to the system. So there's
something missing between these two programs: A database.

That's what stut does. It manages binary pkgsrc packages allowing to
view/hide't from the system, handle different versions, list containing
files of a package, etc.

We used pkgsrc because it works(R) but I think that GNU must define a
new binary package format to get advance on the GNU/HURD features. BTW
using the pkgsrc format or a compatible one (extended) would be nice.
IMHO

>    IIRC stowfs doesn't work yet,
> 
> stowfs works, it only has one minor problem, and that is that it
> cannot be setup during booting yet.  As I initally wrote, I cannot
> solve this due to not having a machine to test things on.  Maybe
> someone else could do it?  It is a very important task, I'm willing to
> help in any way I can.

stut stores a independent database of installed packages and versions.
It does what stow doesn't does.

A simple shellscript or scheme can be easily done. I think the better
way would be to implement a flag or a stut extension in scheme to
setup all the stowfs directories using the stut database.

In this database stut knows what packages are installed and what are
the visible packages for the system. So it would be a 3-5 lines patch
with some c&p.

BTW stowfs stores the information as a translator for the filesystem,
so, what would you wanna setup?

> I think there is some kind of miscommunication going on somewhere, so
> lets try and clear it up.  This is what we have/need right now:
> 
> GNU System Creator (done)
>    -- Builds packages, creates a .iso/.img/.tgz of GNU
> 
> stowfs (almost done, has that minor bug I noted, for now GNU stow is used) 
>    -- the actual package manager (much like dpkg)

stut acts as a frontend for stow (perl), stow(internal in scheme) and
stowfs (not yet implemented). So it could be used to maintain a database
of installed packages, versions, dependencies, views, etc.

> apt-get 
>    -- this we do not have, but we will want to have it.

stut works like apt-get , but with "views" support. But needs some work
on dep. handling AISB.

> I'll try and write a clearer note about all of this and post it on
> www.gnu.org/s/packaging, so that we don't end up with these kind of
> miscommunications again.

I know what GNU have and what Debian have and how works, but i'm just
trying to expose a "new" view or possibility for the GNU package system.

--pancake