Re: [Info-stow] Stow use cases (was: *SUSE)

[Adam Spiers]

On Mon, Nov 21, 2016 at 02:09:47PM +0300, Jean Louis wrote:
> Hello Adam,
> 
> I understand what you mean, and more than GNU Stow I do not need. I
> have been using for years package managers, first rpm, later dpkg,
> apt-get and now only GNU Stow. It helps me make clear distinction
> between versions of software, and I do not need to think much of which
> file belongs to which package, now I can be very sure of it.

That's great that you're finding Stow so useful!  Although honestly I
don't really understand what the benefit would be for using it as the
system's primary package manager.  For example it is trivial in other
package managers to map a filename back to the package which owns it,
e.g.:

    rpm -qf /path/to/file
    dpkg -S /path/to/file

> My GNU system is built completely from sources.

Wow, how did you bootstrap it?  Is it a public distribution, or
something you made yourself?

> I would not like
> having a package manager on this side, it would break the
> system.

Why?

> When you are remote in some areas without Internet, there is
> no access to Internet like in Western countries. So the packages are
> on the local storages.

That is also entirely possible with modern package managers.

> I may also think of making a customized, program based operating
> system compilation, so that people may choose what programs to have in
> the full system, and that it compiles itself.

Isn't that what Gentoo already does?

> On Mon, Nov 21, 2016 at 10:42:22AM +0000, Adam Spiers wrote:
> > On Mon, Nov 21, 2016 at 11:01:04AM +0300, Jean Louis wrote:
> > > Oh, Adam, I was thinking SuSE has a package manager
> > 
> > Yes, it uses rpm.
> > 
> > > and type of
> > > customers who would try anything to avoid messing with GNU Stow.
> > 
> > Stow is a symlink farm manager, not a package manager.  I realise that
> > in the past it was described as a package manager, but these days
> > package managers have evolved so far beyond simple management of files
> > in a package (tracking dependencies, checksums, and lots of other
> > metadata) that Stow no longer fits that description.
> 
> The info page says "program for managing the installation of software
> packages"

That's simply an error.  I already changed the description on the
homepage:

    https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/

>I would avoid "farm manager" as the definition of what
> you know and I know, is not in the Wordnet dictionary. Maybe in some
> other. People may mistake it for cultivation of vegetables.

Haha!  I don't think so ;-)  It's "symlink farm manager", not "farm manager".
There's a big difference :-)

> Wish to see the new version of GNU Stow.

I started working on a new release last night.  I'm horribly busy, but
I hope it will emerge in the next week or two.