Re: Autopkg

[David Lee]

On Fri, 9 Feb 2001, Geoffrey Wossum wrote:

> > I read discussions about auto packaging in automake mailing list.
> > Did you start autopkg?
> > Is there autopkg mailing list?
> > I'd like to join the list.
> 
> epm (http://www.easysw.com/epm/) is sufficient for my current needs, so
> I'm not in a rush to start on autopkg.  It acts as a unified front-end to
> various native packaging tools, which is all autopkg was going to be for a
> while.

Ouch! Isn't that a reduction of priorities and significant lengthening of
timescales? 

>From your message of Thu, 18 Jan 2001

> Yes.  And I plan to do something about it.  I plan to start on a unified
> front end to all the packaging systems within a couple of weeks.  Then
> automake can use this front-end to create packages.  Later on, more
> advanced stuff will be done with it, such as automagically figuring out
> package dependencies and such.

And later that day:

> 6) When I get going with Actual Code (TM)  (within a couple of weeks),
> I'll setup a project on sourceforge for this.

At least it is useful to know that the "couple of weeks" is likely to
slip, and perhaps slip significantly.  (Disappointing, but I fully
understand that we've all got priorities that we need to keep juggling!)

And on Mon, 22 Jan 2001:

> What I'm thinking right now is to use epm as the initial packager for
> autopkg.  autopkg reads a file containing install instructions, then
> generates the epm list file.  It's double work, but eventually autopkg
> would get support for "native" package systems.  Then later autopkg will
> be able to scan Makefile/Makefile.am/some_file to automatically generate
> its install info file.

For my own part, the "epm" stuff looks promising, at least to get started
with.  (I've been using it for a few weeks on various things.)

But what I thought we were very much looking for was a way (under the
working title of "autopkg" or "autopackage") to begin to hook this into
automake and libtool.  So that end-users could do a "make pkg" as an
alternative to "make install" and it would all "Simply Work" (TM).

I know nothing at all about the internals of either automake or libtool. 
But I'm beginning to suspect that this autopkg mechanism will need to have
fairly close working knowledge of automake, and require some information
out of libtool.  And so it might be more appropriate to view autopkg as an
extension to automake rather than a separate product.  (Irrespective of
whether or not the other end of autopkg uses "epm" initially and/or
ultimately.)

But whatever, it would be useful to firm up some direction soon.

Thanks for your work on this Geoffrey.  Even if you feel unable to pursue
autopkg in the near future, I'm grateful for your discussion which has
helped me begin to think about some of the issues.

Best wishes.


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