Re: syspkg?

[Andrew Doran <ad%netbsd.org@localhost>]

Hi Aleksey,

On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 11:33:11PM +0200, Aleksey Cheusov wrote:

> About two years ago or so syspkg project was mensioned in
> http://...RoadMap and was sheduled for NetBSD-5.
> In my view, this project is very important for NetBSD usability
> and for nivice users because it makes upgrades much easier.

I think most people would agree with you. Linux is light years ahead of
the BSD systems in this regard. If we fixed it, it would be a huge
differentiator for us among the BSDs.

> Of course, this is also true for desktop NetBSD project.
> 
> If I understand correctly syspkg was not completed and it is now
> abandoned. Is this true? Any comments or details?

It has been abandoned for a long time.

There are three reasons I can see. Firstly someone needs to do the work.
Secondly, anyone doing the work is likely to encounter a vocal minority of
users who think packages are the work of satan, which would be discouraging.
Thirdly, packages are a simple, easy to digest concept and so everyone is
likely to have an opinion on them.

What it needs is someone to go and produce a working implementation before
disussions about trivial details are allowed to take place. I would not
exclude discussions within a small group or between individuals within the
development stage, I have personally found this to be very useful.

If you look in src/distrib/sets, most of the set lists have suggested
package names listed against each file. It would not take more than a few
days to modify build.sh release to spit out pkgsrc compatible packages,
instead of tarballs. Whether or not how the packages are split up is useful
or not is another question, as is how do we get the packages installed via
sysinst? There may be difficult questions that are not purely technical, for
example how does it integerate with pkgsrc, etc, but those are not questions
that one person can answer.

Thanks,
Andrew