Re: Package System specification

[Jochem Huhmann <joh@gmx.net>]

* "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@transmeta.com> wrote:
> And this is a bad thing?  Seriously.  For a vendor to have to ship N
> different file formats isn't going to look good for Linux.

Seriously: A vendor who is able to package a nice and working rpm, but
not a Debian-Package shouldn't be trusted in other things, too. Yes, it
is boring and somehow needless work to do more than one packaging, but
this is *not* a show-stopper for any real vendor. A lot of people do
that already without being paid for it or earning money with
that. Compared to porting an app from Windows to Linux packaging for
different distributions is a joke. It is ugly, yes, but I don't really
see a short-term solution which isn't even more ugly.

> RPM really is the de facto standard, like it or not.  We might as well
> make it de jure and make it cleaner for the ISV.

I see these possibilities:

1. Agree on an existing packager and say it is "standard". Choose
   RPM-packages or Debian-Packages. Choosing RPM would make Redhat happy
   (SuSE and Mandrake and so on wouldn't be happy necassarily, because
   they often organize their dependencies in other ways). It would make
   LSB loose the support in large parts of the community, though. Or
   choose the Debian way. This would mean a lot of work for everyone
   except Debian. Probably this would gain lots of support from the
   community though.

2. Don't specify this at all. Vendors then have to supply packages for
   the systems they see as target market. If they see Debian or SuSE as
   tiny enough to ignore them, or see the work caused by this as too
   large, it's their problem.

3. Try to come up with a standard that is common enough to be the new
   standard for packaging, so distributors can switch from their
   packaging systems. This means lots of work and I do not see any
   approach that looks like it could be a working system in the near
   future.

I would (with all sensibility) prefer 2 with a future option to 3.

Declare RPM as standard for LSB and LSB will be taken as PR-gig from
Redhat. And still, RPM is not RPM. Compare the dependencies from
Redhat-RPM and SuSE-RPM and you will see that. 


        Jochem

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