Re: [Syllable-developer] Syllable installation system white paper

[Vandervliet, K. <Kri...@an...>]

Turki Al-Marri wrote:
> I've arranged a white paper about Syllable installation system:
> http://www.geocities.com/tigenius/SIS.html
>=20
> Please read it thoroughly and reply.
>=20
> Criticism is more than welcome, because we want to get it=20
> right from the first shot ;)

I don't want to dampen your enthusiasm and your energy is great,
but you're making a fundemental error: You've assumed Syllable needs
some form of complex package management system.  You're coming at
Syllable from a Linux viewpoint, so your assumption here makes some
sort of sense, but it is misguided.

Applications should not be complex enough to ever require the type
of package management you propose.  Package managers do not belong
on Syllable, because Syllable does not need them.

You also make some technical errors:

o Any installation system that automatically ran a shell script as
  the root user is a huge security hole: there is nothing to stop
  a malicious developer including "rm -rf /" or something equally
  henious in a script.
o ZIP is used on Syllable for a very specific reason.  As far as I
  am aware, 7zip would be unsuitable for general use on Syllable
  because it can not store attribute data.

BUT! it isn't all bad.  Your "description" file may have some merit,
in a different role.  An *optional* description file inside a package,
which could be easily read and parsed before the package is installed
could have some uses E.g. if we had an online repository for software
it would be possible to extract and display the description
information of any package that was uploaded (Aminet for Syllable!)

--=20
Vanders
http://www.syllable.org
http://www.liqwyd.com=20
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