Re: Ideas and questions on pkgsrc

[Chris Turner <c.turner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Aggelos Economopoulos wrote:
> Well, w/o having seen the code, this sounds like a bit of a hack :) Also
> I'm not sure what problem you're solving. Pkgsrc already has working
> package dependencies. The serious issue is with handling upgrades.

yup. possibly so.

Problem solving: installing a box that does X, and specifying a box
  that does 'X' simply.

e.g.: my desktop is 80%

windowmaker
nautilus
firefox
aterm
emacs

and webdev is 80%

apache
postgres
p-languages

therefore 'workstation' ==

require desktop
require webdev

and I'm done - and I don't care if package 'foo' switched to 
latest-desktop-technology-blah v4.6d in the meantime, and I don't
have to track it in the makefiles.

also makes it easy to make tools that automate system builds, etc..

> Eh, to do this properly you'd have to upgrade all packages depending on
> your 'base' packages and all packages depending on those packages and so
> on ("transitive closure").

I'd only really do this for 'core' things - like a DNS server, MTA, etc.

(those pesky types of things that keep getting moved out of base)

these tend to be highly contested leaf-nodes, which don't really
have dependancies - aka things that 'used to be' part of the OS.

I personally blow away the entire system at each release - and
don't really do much in the middle (effectively 'upgrading all 
packages') . Test box gets test packages - if I get the time to do it. 
Though I'm adressing my workflow as I get back up to speed from where I 
was ~2y ago..