Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753897AbZKBG2N (ORCPT ); Mon, 2 Nov 2009 01:28:13 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1753521AbZKBG2M (ORCPT ); Mon, 2 Nov 2009 01:28:12 -0500 Received: from ix.technologeek.org ([213.41.157.215]:51239 "EHLO sonic.technologeek.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-FAIL) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753290AbZKBG2L (ORCPT ); Mon, 2 Nov 2009 01:28:11 -0500 X-Greylist: delayed 646 seconds by postgrey-1.27 at vger.kernel.org; Mon, 02 Nov 2009 01:28:11 EST From: Julien BLACHE To: "Ryan C. Gordon" Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: FatELF patches... References: <1257103201.2865.6.camel@chumley> <20091102000147.424f104b@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> Date: Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:17:26 +0100 In-Reply-To: (Ryan C. Gordon's message of "Sun, 1 Nov 2009 21:21:47 -0500 (EST)") Message-ID: <87zl75h2mh.fsf@sonic.technologeek.org> User-Agent: Gnus/5.110009 (No Gnus v0.9) XEmacs/21.4.22 (linux) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2106 Lines: 55 "Ryan C. Gordon" wrote: Hi, With my Debian Developer hat on... > Package managers are a _fantastic_ invention. They are a killer > feature over other operating systems, including ones people pay way > too much money to use. That being said, there are lots of places where > using a package manager doesn't make sense: > experimental software that might have an audience but isn't ready for > wide adoption That usually ships as sources or prebuilt binaries in a tarball - target /opt and voila! For a bigger audience you'll see a lot of experimental stuff that gets packaged (even in quick'n'dirty mode). > software that isn't appropriate for an apt/yum repository Just create a repository for the damn thing if you want to distribute it that way. There's no "appropriate / not appropriate" that applies here. > software that distros refuse to package but is still perfectly useful Look at what happens today. A lot of that gets packaged by third parties, and more often than not they involve distribution maintainers. (See debian-multimedia, PLF for Mandriva, ...) > closed-source software Why do we even care? Besides, commercial companies can just stop sitting on their hands and start distributing real packages. It's no different from rolling out a Windows Installer or Innosetup. It's packaging. > and software that wants to work between distros that don't have > otherwise-compatible rpm/debs (or perhaps no package manager at all). Tarball, /opt, static build. And, about the /lib, /lib32, /lib64 situation Debian and Debian-derived systems, the solution to that is multiarch and it's being worked on. It's a lot better and cleaner than the fat binary kludge. JB. -- Julien BLACHE GPG KeyID 0xF5D65169 -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/