Colin Putney <cputney at wiresong.ca> wrote:
> 
> On Tuesday, July 29, 2003, at 01:39  AM, Avi Bryant wrote:
> 
> > What about taking a page from Ned's book and making the format be a ZIP
> > file?  You could have special paths monticello/package,
> > monticello/version_info which contained the metadata, and
> > monticello/snapshot which explained (as a SAR-like install script,
> > perhaps) how to recreate the Snapshot from whatever other members (like
> > "source.sif", say) were in the ZIP.
> >
> > They could in fact be SAR files, whose install script checked for the
> > presence of Monticello.  If it was there, they wouldn't directly 
> > install
> > anything but instead would pop up the Version window from which you can
> > load, merge, etc.  If there was no Monticello they would load 
> > themselves
> > into the image as best they could.
> >
> > How does this sit with people?
> 
> I like it. This pretty much lets us have our cake and eat it too. As a 
> bonus, the compression ought to keep these files reasonably small.
> 
> A couple of thoughts:
> 
> One, we ought to have a way of putting multiple packages in one file. 
> Combined with Monticello's ability to figure out dependencies, this 
> gives us a good way to distribute applications, which may consist of 
> several packages.

I definitely don't agree. This would really conflict with the current
plan for dependencies/SM etc.
One of the big things with that plan is that dependency information
should NOT be inside the packages etc.

> Also, I agree with Daniel - no scripts. Let's not go wrapping our nice 
> declarative format with an imperative index.

Exactly.
 
> Colin

regards, Göran