[gobolinux-users] NixOS vs GoboLinux

[Isaac Dupree]

Samuel A. Falvo II wrote:
> On 10/23/07, Isaac Dupree <isaacdupree at charter.net> wrote:
>> I didn't see them using the word 'transactional' ... maybe I just meant
>> that they really wanted everything to fit into their packaging system,
>> because it makes things so much more reliable and flexible when it
>> works.  I'm not sure what exactly you mean by "transactional", and
>> Wikipedia isn't helping...
> 
> When Foo is transactional, it has the property that either EVERYTHING
> that Foo does succeeds, or NOTHING does.
> 
> It's a very important concept in database engineering; you'll often
> see the acronym "ACID" as a synonym.

then I suppose it is transactional, in a way that makes one be more sure 
of what's on one's system

> 
>> Gobo's method only detects dynamically linked binaries - not python
>> scripts, not dlopen(), not paths in config files the build process
>> generates... (I don't know how common those are)
> 
> I guess I'll have to read up on it, because I still can't see how the
> hashes are helping.  Clearly they're not using dynamic detection
> techniques, which means either package maintainer intervention, or
> some other means.  I'm going to speculate that if that's true, then
> the package maintainer should feel just as comfortable with
> /Programs/Foo as with a hashed value.

Because "/Programs/Foo" is more likely to just happen to appear in some 
string somewhere, and can be deliberately placed, compared to a long 
hash (which might only be duplicated in Nix example-documentation, I 
suppose)

Isaac