DPS Initial Ideas

[Kris Kennaway]

On Sat, May 12, 2007 at 11:09:35AM +0200, Michel Talon wrote:

> Seriously, the FreeBSD package
> system is in great need of a profound overhaul, pretending it works well
> is complete denial of reality. I hope that young people working on 
> summer code projects will infuse *new* ideas, and not spend their
> vacations polishing inadequate tools.

I know that this is your belief, but please try to avoid grasping at
straws: there are elements in your argument that are along the lines
of "The FreeBSD package system is broken and needs to be fundamentally
changed.  Rewriting it to use SQLite is a fundamental change.
Therefore rewriting it to use SQLite will fix the problems."

First figure out what specific problems need to be solved, then figure
out how to solve them, not the other way around.  So far I have seen
little discussion of how SQLite is necessary and sufficient for fixing
fundamental issues.  The argument in favour of SQL seems to boil down
to "It's SQL!  You can do more complex queries...if you wanted to".

Without a clear demonstration of how this would solve a problem
associated with package management, it is not very compelling and
basically reduces to change for the sake of change.

As I discussed in my email yesterday, there are serious issues to be
solved.  Some of them can be solved by improving the storage backend
of the package database to use a database; but this is in progress
using existing tools.

Given that this work is happening (or at least will be happening, I am
not sure when the SoC officially starts), the best thing is for
interested people to work with Garrett to help him achieve the goals
of his project.

Kris
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