Re: [9fans] Man pages for add-ons

["Federico G. Benavento" <benavento@gmail.com>]

one of the reasons I wrote contrib was that I got tired of
explaining people how the whole process of how to install
a program.

; 9ffs sources
; fcp /n/sources/contrib/dude/thing.tgz /tmp
; cd /tmp
; gunzip < thing.tgz | tar x
; cd thing
; mk install

simple right? but when you've spent tons of 15 minutes
parcels you start getting tired and you write some code.

so the bind magic might work great for those who know
how to get it going, but random newbie won't get it
that fast.

so
; contrib/install dude/thing

seemed reasonable, it has the -r to choose a different
root.

lotte%  wc -l /rc/bin/contrib/*
     19 /rc/bin/contrib/cat
    122 /rc/bin/contrib/create
     97 /rc/bin/contrib/install
    105 /rc/bin/contrib/list
     35 /rc/bin/contrib/local
    132 /rc/bin/contrib/pull
     83 /rc/bin/contrib/push
     41 /rc/bin/contrib/remove
    634 total
lotte% wc -l /sys/src/cmd/contrib/*.c
    455 /sys/src/cmd/contrib/gui.c
lotte%

the real solution is that you want to have a centralized
repository with just binary packages and easy to use
set of tools to use it.

but then that requires some effort and I don't see
any solution in the near future.

one can easily say, "hey, use namespaces!", but
you get someone to reply "hey, write your own driver!"
in the end everything is easy for those who know
how to do it.

--
Federico G. Benavento