From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <61c2d8c54123c088fe27efeb4edfcaf6@swcp.com> References: <6aaf2d79af665bf1905db13e44e194e5@quanstro.net> <3c68655ad1dadf393d44b4a945abbd7a@swcp.com> <26f3b3b7fc6f7e8e8d90094305925bdd@kw.quanstro.net> <61c2d8c54123c088fe27efeb4edfcaf6@swcp.com> From: Jorden M Date: Sun, 16 May 2010 11:46:41 -0400 Message-ID: To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Subject: Re: [9fans] nupas update Topicbox-Message-UUID: 24b8d712-ead6-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 On Sun, May 16, 2010 at 11:21 AM, EBo wrote: > >> portage is horrid. =A0i hate it more every time i use it. >> and it doesn't work. =A0revdep rebuild is proof. > > it is a lot more dependable than any other package maintenance system I'v= e > used on *NIX based systems. =A0The fundamental problem requiring revdep i= s I honestly can't support that. I do like Portage, but it is horribly fragile. The few volunteers that work with it can't keep it from breaking every few months, and when they finally have a fix, it's a long wiki page of instructions, not a simple `ok, everyone update your portage trees for the fix'. Now, I've never seen Portage itself screw up the tree, unlike Apt, which I've seen muck up its own database beyond any repair whatsoever. But still, I've only been nuked by Apt once, and beaten bloody by Portage several times, despite having used Portage much much less than Apt. > >> it's not clear to me that this is gentoo's fault. =A0linux and >> gnu together are one heck of a difficult place for >> a distribution to live. =A0but replicating portage would seem >> to me to be a big mistake. > > I see that I was not clear. =A0I have no intention of replicating portage= , > but I DO intend to replicate some of the fundamental functionality. =A0I = do > not see this as much more than an extension of fgb's contrib or ron's new > package installer. =A0If you see otherwise I would love to hear why. > >> not only does the plan 9 >> community lack the resources to maintain 30 different >> versions of /bin/cp (or whatever), much less portage redux, >> it will encourage gnu/linux habits, because that's what it's >> built for. > > in practice, there are only two versions which are actively maintained -- > the canonical stable version, and the latest experimental. =A0Assuming th= at > the stable version is in fact actually stable, then there is little need = to > actually maintain older versions, but sometimes it is useful to go back a= nd > reconfigure them. =A0Particularly when you have scripts and things which > depend on some oddities command line arguments (I'm referring here to the > thread regarding standard arguments). > > Lacking some mechanism to deal with specific versions, just to name one > issue, is that you have no easy way to get go back to a known working > version when an update breaks something. =A0The situation which prompted = this > very thread is a case in point. > > My motivation for wanting, and probably implementing, version controlled > builds/runs is to dependently replicating complicated modeling scenarios. > >> we should build something that encourages a simplier >> system, a system plan 9 people would really want. > > 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 fac= t > that plan 9 is a much cleaner design, probably 3/4 of the junk is simply > not needed. =A0The question is how much of the basic functionality is use= ful, > and what is the most appropriate way to go about implementing it. > > =A0EBo -- > > >