Re: Package format/management ramblingss

[Richard Stallman]

    Your attempt is to make different versions generally not conflict --
    completely different to existing package managing systems -- and link
    the system-wide preference to a file name which not contains the
    version number.  Right?

Yes.  And also provide a way to run the non-preferred package.

    And, as far as I can see, it would not even necessarily require the
    Hurd to work on.

It depends on automatically constructing the contents of /bin, /etc,
and various other directories and files.  It may be hard to get this
to work without the Hurd.

    > Do you mean something like /package/foo -> /disk/foo-$foover?  Then
    > you would set configuration variable foover to either a or b?  That
    > could be a good feature.  We could combine the two by using $ in the
    > symlink's name, too: /package/address@hidden -> /disk/foo-a, for
    > instance.

    Am I right this is similar to the case above, but with real shell
    variables?

I am talking about the specs of the interface.  Whether they would
be *implemented* with shell variables, I don't know, but I doubt it.

    You are in a kind of chroot environment and have the directory /disk
    which contains the directory tree of the system.

    You merge /disk/bin, /disk/sbin and /disk/home/<user>/bin to /bin,  
    which you have full access to in your environment.

I am not talking about a single user's chroot environment.  I am
talking about configuring the *whole system*'s default environment.

However, having some sort of per-user customizability might be nice
too.  Each user could have a package subdir of his home dir.

You're talking about "merging" where as I have in mind virtual
construction of various dirs and files.  Perhaps this is a scheme for
implementing something on GNU/Linux.

    You regard a conflict where two packages provide the same file?

Yes.  Is there some other kind?

    In the case of directories, I would not consider a conflict fatal.  If,
    regarding the case above, /disk/cdrom/share/foo and
    /disk/home/<user>/share/foo provide the same file, just prefer the
    CD-ROM because you have included it to get some additional data that is
    not found in your installation.

I don't follow, I am not sure what case you are talking about here.