>On Wed, 30 Sep 1998, Jonathan Stone wrote:
>> I think we could still make pkgsets be a _super_set of the normal pkg
>> format. That's probably a worthwile goal and I dont see any reason not
>> to. And we could always extend our pkg tools, so the handle a pkgset
>> by just installing all the component pkgs.
>> 
>> I could live with that; how about you?

>Depends on how that "making a superset" works. From the UI POV (handling
>everything with one tool), that's all I've been talking about.

Huh?


I'm largely ignoring the UI POV. The issues I'm concerned about are
about the `container' format: finding the contents, finding total
unpacked sizes, and how to feed each pkg item in the `container' to
the pkg tools


We _already_ have two sets of tools -- sysinst and the pkg_* commands.
I dont see either of them as going away.  What we're talking about is
unifying the two formats, pkgs and tarballs, and that requires changes
from both sides.

the issues I _am_ trying to address are about `containers':
  a) that we need them for the install side;
  b) we need to extract a contents-list of a `container',
     so users can opt to select individual pkgs rather than the
     whole `container' set.  Hopefully we can do that without
     requiring one pass over the set for for each pkg in  the set.
  c) Knowing total unpacked sizes for each set, broken down by
     `standard' filesystem boundaries, would be nice, but not essential.
  d) an extension mechanism, for future-proofing:
     e.g., so at some later point we can add `default' options for
     which sets to unpack and which to not unpack, if that ever
     becomes sensible.
  e) maybe, just maybe, some idea of dependencies betwen `pkgsets'.


We can either have two completly different formats and two sets of
tools, or we can agree on a file format which both tools can grok.
That way, a user who wants to add more sets, post-install, can do so
with either the pkg tools or with sysinst.

That's what I'm trying to do.   the install folks have already
given up on raw tarballs of pkgs. How else can we help come
closer to a single shared file format for pkgs and pkgsets?