Re: [Helidelinux-devel] Package manager

[Rolf V. <rol...@he...>]

Hui Zhou wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 16, 2004 at 02:47:14PM +0000, Rolf Veen wrote:
> 
>>>>PKG -c <start|stop|status> name
>>>>PKG -d name	Return configuration (in OGDL)

> To implement them in a package manager, it need to understand each
> package, such as which program is daemon, how to translate all types
> of conf file back and forth to ogdl and what action each package is
> capable of. In some aspect, the package manager will never be
> complete (too many package varieties to take care of).

No, a package would be responsible for providing the apropiate
interface. For example, in my case each package lives in its own
directory below /pkg. The system wide Apache httpd is in
/pkg/apache. The control script is /pkg/apache/META/bin/control.
When doing:

# pkg -c start apache

the only thing that happens is that, if a control file is present,
it is executed with the 'start' argument. Simple.

> On the other hand, the package manager can provide a common gate way.
> Each package provides a tool with common interface, and the package
> manager talk to each package using this interface. Basically, each
> package knows how to take care of themselves. But I am afraid this
> won't happen until this sort of package manager is well established.

Until then, we can supply patches to some packages.

Rolf.