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On Thu, 1 Oct 1998, Hubert Feyrer wrote:

>On Thu, 1 Oct 1998, Jonathan Stone wrote:
>> Whereas I'm suggesting changing the formats used by _both_ sets of
>> tools, so that they can both operate on pkgsets.  That means enhancing
>> the format used by the current pkg tools a wee bit -- some size
>> indicator, I dont care which of the two options, and a recursion
>> marker -- and keeping the two tools in synch thereafter.
>> 
>> You're saying that won't fly.
>> 
>> Can we both agree on that as  a fair summary?
>
>Hard to say - for now I undertstand that you want to extend pkg_* to
>understand "containers", but you didn't tell us how to do this yet.

On the contrary, several possible ways to do this have been floated, in
the original requirements document (of September 19), the original
proposal (of September 29), and on this list, tech-pkg and
current-users.  The proposed methods, so far are:

	* package sets could be a tarball of packages with a contents
	  file.  A tool to install such a set would untar the package
	  and install each individual package.

	* package sets could be an extension to the current package
	  format to allow recursively included packages.  Upon seeing
	  an @pkg tag (or whatever) in +CONTENTS, pkg_add would invoke
	  itself recursively on the relevant file.

	* package sets could be packages which contain a +SETCONTENTS
	  file instead of a +CONTENTS file, triggering pkg_add to invoke
	  itself recursively, as above.

- -- 
				Jim Wise
				jwise@unicast.com



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