Re: Configuration (File) System
I'm just thinking about future of Gnu/Linux desktop systems. We have to store
some package specific metadata into filesystems. Package management must be
done in filesystem level (probably a network file system). If file foo
belongs to package bar, filesystem must be aware of this. There may be lots
of advantages, just an example: You are a desktop user, and Openoffice is not
installed on your system. You've got an email, which contains an excel
document, and you have to see it as soon as possible. What must we do?
Downloading whole Openoffice package about 50+ MB? But your friend near by
you, has openoffice installed. You just want to an excel viewer. So, why we
can't use excel viewer of your friend? It can be done automatically (with
proper authentication setup) and your Gnu/Linux system browse the whole local
network, finds installed excel viewer applications and downloads them,
install them and you can look at the excel document. Or, if finds any excel
viewer, it does not necessary to install, it opens the document on your
friend's computer and it takes only X output.
murat,
On Thursday 18 March 2004 16:14, Jens Hermans wrote:
> On Thu, 2004-03-18 at 12:14, Murat Demirten wrote:
> > I think in the future Linux distributions have to develop new filesystems
> > for package managenment. It's time to start thinking about advanced
> > package managenment systems (backward compatibility must not be
> > important). If package managenment implemented in file system level,
> > we'll have more genius systems. So, CFS can be an internal part of a such
> > a new file system, don't make borders on your imagination about CFS :)
> >
> > murat,
>
> I think what you describe comes fairly close to the utility's that
> enable you to mount tar's (and tar.gz's, ...). Just browse inside the
> tar, without ever really extracting a file to disk. Do the same with
> .deb's and get rid of "installing" packages.
>
> With or without such filesystem based package management, cfs would come
> in handy anyway, since all software tends to use their own format for
> configuring instead of a standard.
>
> Maybe I'm completely missing your point, it's your turn now :p, maybe
> you can give an example of how you think the ideal package management
> enabled fs would work.
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