hubert.feyrer@rrzc1.rz.uni-regensburg.de (Hubert Feyrer) writes:

>On Fri, 24 Jul 1998, Tim Rightnour wrote:
>> anything else to do the same..  Having mysql run itself is fine.. just shut the
>> !@#$ thing off before leaving the config.. I don't like finding out I have a
>> service I didn't even know was running on my machine a few days later..

>Sure not, but you decide to have the service when you pkg_add/make 
>install whatever you're doing.

See my earlier comment about gratitously interactive packages.

>I've helped setting up some machine for some Linux wheenie recently, and 
>wow was he surprised some things did *not* work out of the box after 
>pkg_add... certainly things like adding things to config files like the 
>apache modules.

Taking a random broken system as an example isn't a reason to produce
another broken system.  It's not even a good excuse.

>You wouldn't mind any shell-pkg modifying /etc/shells either.

Probably not, but that doesn't prove much.

>The deal if the pkg system was and is to make things for _users_ as easy 
>as possible. Introducing any additional manual intervention is bad.

However, installing packages and configuring them are orthogonal activities.
The package system should deal with installing packages only, IMHO.
If you want to make it easy for users to install _and_ configure packages,
we should provide a system configuration utility like the ones the Linux
distributions use and that utility should handle the task of configuring
the packages (and install the software if it's not already installed).

That way both, uh, normal and sophisticated users could win.
I don't see the point in driving the sophisticated users away from the
package system.

-- 
Christoph Badura
Verlag O'Reilly