Re: [9fans] nupas update

[Ethan Grammatikidis <eekee57@fastmail.fm>]

On 16 May 2010, at 16:21, EBo wrote:
> As I said I was motivated by my portage experience not that I intend
> to
> reimplement portage, but even if I did attempt a reimplementation
> the fact
> that plan 9 is a much cleaner design, probably 3/4 of the junk is
> simply
> not needed.  The question is how much of the basic functionality is
> useful,
> and what is the most appropriate way to go about implementing it.

Have you tried Sorcery from Source Mage? I'd say that's Portage
without "3/4 of the junk," but it's still quite complex. I may be
talking out of my arse but I don't see anything inherent to plan 9
which would simplify a package manager, unless it's the common use of
versioning file systems, the use of which may have removed the need
for this thread.

I'd honestly MUCH rather use a versioning file system than any package
manager at all. I dare say a versioning file system is the Right Way
and a package manager very much the Wrong Way. On a couple of unix
machines I've even started using git to keep revisions in /usr/local.
I don't suppose it's entirely brilliant but I've dealt with RPM, I've
dealt with Portage, I've dealt with Sorcery (which is very good), I've
vaguely sort of coped with dpkg (which always gives me "what the hell"
and "ye gods, why" feelings), and honestly, even saying Sorcery is
very good I'm happier without any package manager.

--
Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it. -- Alan Perlis