I don't really like the idea of installing software into different paths depending upon where it is installed. It reminds me too much of Windows 95/DOS where each application has to ask where it is installed. And then other packages can't rely on a particular file to always be at a certain place. Perhaps it might be cleaner, but more complicated to build into dpkg, if dpkg could be made aware of "status" files on remote servers (on read-only filesystems) and it could "install" the remotely installed packages by inserting symlinks into the filesystem. The nfsroot package does something similar to that to allow multiple clients to share system and config files. Of course, there are severe problems to consider. How does the client keep it's symlinks synchronized with the remote servers? Maybe symlinks aren't the answer - perhaps a union filesystem might be more useful. If dpkg could be rigged up to "share" status files, and configure something like a union filesystem - that might be pretty slick. Cheers, - Jim
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