Re: How Debian Packaging practices could apply to VistA maintenance and distribution
On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 06:13:36PM -0500, Bhaskar, K.S wrote:
> >Hmmm, just to make sure I understood everything correctly let me assume
> >we want to remove a VistA package at some point in time but keep the
> >data it created. Dpkg expects to find all those files it has installed
> >in certain places to remove them (as it has installed them before).
> >What will now happen to your data. Will these hang around in those
> >directories which previosely were installed by the packages. While we
> >can deel with everything somehow this means extra work^Wfun for the
> >packager.
>
> [KSB] You can't properly separate VistA from the data. On another
> message I posted to this thread a few minutes ago, I made an analogy
> between a VistA environment and a Linux virtual machine. You can
> think VistA environmenta just as you can think of virtual machines:
> although you can delete a VistA environment completely, just as you
> can delete a virtual machine, you can't keep the data in a VistA
> environment and delete the VistA, just as you can't easily keep the
> data in a virtual machine root partition and delete the rest of the
> virtual machine.
Oh, you could, by mounting the disk images and deleting all
but the data files (which requires knowledge about what's
inside the VM, yes). One could then, technically, re-inject
the VM-OS into the data-only-VM-remnant at a later stage.
But I agree this is rarely useful. More useful would be to
extract the data files from the VM and keep them for
injection into another VM. But that's a backup, not a
separation. And it may well be "not possible" with a
VistA-VM.
So, sticking to the VistA-VM metaphor is likely going to help.
Karsten
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