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Hi all! |
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|
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This one will be my first msg to the list and maybe also |
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the last one. |
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I'm not a portage developer, neither a free software |
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developer, maybe a sysadm, fallen in love of Linux more |
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than 10 years ago; it was 1.0 kernel and Slackware. |
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|
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Now, after many years of RedHat, some Mandrake's and |
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SUSE's usage and Debian too (few, very few because their |
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installer was really worst than the Gentoo one and I'm not |
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joking), it's about a year that I'm using Gentoo with big |
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satisfaction. |
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It's really a great - for me the greatest - distribution |
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and its philosophy (a meta-distribution where the focus is |
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on the user's freedom) is the best one for me, but I think |
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also in the true Linux spirit (the free software of the |
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excellence). |
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One of the reasons to choose Gentoo has been portage, its |
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power and its flexibility. I think it's really better (in a |
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objective manner) than rpm or dpkg and it can solve problems |
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they can't address. |
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Many years ago I went away from Slackware to RedHat because |
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rpm was really better than tgz to manage packages, |
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dependencies, installations, uninstallations and upgrades, |
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like in these days I think portage is better than rpm and |
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dpkg. |
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|
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Now I found on the lwn.net (Linux Weekly News) of thursday, |
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Oct 14, an article on Conary. From its home page |
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http://www.specifix.com/technology/index.htm it is: |
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|
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"a distributed software management system for Linux |
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distributions. It replaces traditional package mangement |
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solutions (such as RPM and dpkg) with one designed to |
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enable loose collaboration across the Internet. |
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Conary enables sets of distributed and loosely connected |
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repositories to define the components which are installed |
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on a Linux system. Rather than having a full distribution |
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come from a single vendor, Conary allows administrators |
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and developers to branch a distribution, keeping the |
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pieces which fit their environment while grabbing components |
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from other repositories across the Internet. |
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[...] |
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complete information on Conary is available from the |
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Conary Wiki <http://wiki.specifixinc.com>. |
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It includes links to white papers, technical papers, |
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documentation, and source code. It also provides information |
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on Specifix's Linux distribution which was built using |
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Conary." |
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|
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I'd ask you, who can develop and developped that superb thing |
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that's portage to see if there are - and I think that yes, |
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there are - usefull concepts, idea and code to grab from there |
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to make yet better portage. |
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|
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In my Gentoo system administration experience there are at |
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least 2-3 things that with a Conary sw management system |
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could address better than portage. It is local configuration |
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files updates, binary only updates and updates of the only |
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changed things, instead of full ones. |
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The first one is simple: in a litle gentoo system that I'm |
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managing for a year now with authomatic nightly updates, |
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I had to update almost manually about a hundred of |
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configuration files. The system (gentoo) is well designed, |
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so, if I didn't update, all works because the original |
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configuration files stay in place, but for the better and |
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also only for the good, the thing to do is to use etc-update |
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to update such configuration files. The problem is that such |
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process is really time consuming and error prone, so it's |
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not very good. |
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Instead it seems that, from the architecture level, Conary |
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has been made to manage local configuration changes an |
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updates to avoid such pains. |
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The second thing is the binary choice. In Gentoo is more |
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difficult than it should be (at least from my point ov view), |
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it is that the system gives the choice of binary updates only, |
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but it's really difficult to find only binary packages and |
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also if one can find them it's impossible to find only |
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modified files in a package and to update only those and also |
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to download only diffs and only binaries diffs. I think that |
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also these things could be achieved studying the Conary |
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way. |
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|
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Sorry for the length of the message and for the absence |
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of code, practical idea or implementations. |
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I'm sorry, but I can't. |
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|
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Best regards, good gentooing to all and yet better |
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portageing to you, |
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|
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Andrea |
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|
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-- |
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gentoo-portage-dev@g.o mailing list |