[gobolinux-devel] Some suggestions for package management in GoboLinux

[Hisham Muhammad]

On 11/14/06, Jonatan Liljedahl <lijon at kymatica.com> wrote:
> MJ Ray wrote:
> > "Laércio Benedito de Sousa Júnior" wrote:
> >> - Append revision numbers in Recipes/Packages version numbers [...]
> >
> > This has been discussed in the past.  I don't recall the outcome.
>
> I think it will come later?

Yes, it will. Scripts and Compile need to be updated to support this, though.

> >> - Introduce a special directory for package management specific purposes and
> >> let packages (or the user) choose under which prefix they will be installed.
> >
> > Aieee, please no!  One nice thing about gobolinux is the relative lack
> > of package manager clutter.  Maybe there could be a way to install
> > packages under /Files and then link them under /System, but I'm not
> > sure how easily that could be done.
>
> If a package should be symlinked under /System/Links, then just put it
> in /Programs as usual. As I understand it, /Files is for stuff that does
> not fit in the usual layout, and where the user/admin wants to add small
> files now and then (like /Files/Fonts).

Yes. Stuff under files are not packages proper, so they're not under
package management.

For the particular case of plugins, I think a case could be made to
have them moved from /Files into the /Programs tree, actually.

> But it would be nice if Compile
> and InstallPackage could install things to /Files too. One could have a
> recipe to download some set of fonts and put them under /Files/Fonts,
> perhaps with a prompt to optionally modify the destination directory...

That could be nice from a UI-simplicity perspective.

> On the other hand, there already is a /System/Links/Shared/fonts used by
> KDE and OpenOffice it seems...

I think these are remnants of pre-fontconfig days when apps couldn't
rely much on fonts provided by standard X server mechanisms.

> And many stuff looks for plugins under /S/L/Shared/... as well. For
> example GStreamer.

Yes, there are already various kinds of add-ons that are designed to
live under /Programs.

-- Hisham