new distro (and versioning)

[Gerald Combs]

On Sat, 16 Feb 2002, Jonathan Hale wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Brian Densmore <DensmoreB at ctbsonline.com>
> To: <kclug at kclug.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2002 9:36 AM
> Subject: RE: new distro (and versioning)
> 
> 
> > CVS tracks previous versions. CVS isn't limited to just software. It is
> > tracking files. It can track this project. I remember seeing Subversion
> > mentioned somewhere, but forgot about it.
> 
> Actually, that was poorly worded on my part... I meant maybe some coder
> could have a look at it and see if there would be something useful for
> dealing with package updates and the dependancy hell that everyone keeps
> talking about (or was that over on the KULUA list?) :-)

CVS might be useful, but it probably won't do everything you need.  It's
great at taking snapshots of a directory tree and managing different
branches and versions, but not so great at helping you manage
dependencies.

{Free|Net|Open}BSD use CVS to manage their ports/packages systems.  They
provide a directory tree that you can sync using CVS.  The directory tree
is organized by category and contains makefile targets that let you
compile and install various applications.  Dependencies are handled by the
makefile scripts (which makes sense - 'make' is all about dependency
checking, after all).  More information and a browsable ports tree can be
found at http://www.freebsd.org/ports/index.html.

A while back one of the FreeBSD core developers started a project to unify
the BSD ports/packages system and make it available for other OSes,
including Linux. The site is at http://www.openpackages.org, but hasn't
seen much activity for a while.  Which is too bad, since I'd love to be
able to use the ports system under Linux and Solaris.  I like it a lot
better than other packaging systems I've used including Red Hat, Solaris
(SVr4), Debian, SCO, HP, IBM, and DEC/Compaq.