From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <4BF30837.7000405@magma.com.ni> References: <6aaf2d79af665bf1905db13e44e194e5@quanstro.net> <73593227-5C73-40A0-AC83-5AE9C1DED2EF@fastmail.fm> <93e082dad3d2b8c9c1dc98a0a58c67b0@swcp.com> <201005161158.18614.corey@bitworthy.net> <4BF30837.7000405@magma.com.ni> Date: Tue, 18 May 2010 15:07:30 -0700 Message-ID: From: ron minnich To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Subject: Re: [9fans] nupas update Topicbox-Message-UUID: 2674a338-ead6-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 2:35 PM, Georg Lehner wrote: > Another view on software managment: > > http://cr.yp.to/slashpackage/management.html My system is very close to that. But I still like the idea that you have as little state as possible, and that package installation be so convenient you don't think about it much. You want to update tex? Well, maybe it's out of date, maybe it isn't, who cares? If the user says reload it, reload it. It only takes a minute or so anyway -- so who cares? It may take a minute figuring out if it is up to date or not with some of the package managers! And they tend to scatter files all over the place; if the package no longer uses them, you have to hunt them down and remove them. But, oh wait, suppose some other package now depends on that file being there? Do you remove it or not? I think in the limit the problem can't be solved. The incredible complexity of the package managers on many systems doesn't really help as much as it seems to cost. ron