On Tue, 2003-01-21 at 11:57, Ned Konz wrote:
> On Tuesday 21 January 2003 07:03 am, you wrote:
> > In the short term maybe this does need to be in a seperate package.
> > However that's going to cause an explosion of packages I think,
> > packages that handle the intersections between existing packages.
> >  In the long term however I think we need to come up with a
> > mechanism that can allow these intersections to be packaged into
> > one or the other package but dynamically be applied depending on
> > whether or not the other package is installed.  In other words, on
> > installing the package that includes the intersection the installer
> > checks to see if the package that the intersection applies to is
> > already installed.  If it is then the intersection is installed.
> >  If it is not, the intersection package is somehow added as a
> > "dormant" payload to the installation system which is directed to
> > install it if the other package is installed.  Similarly the
> > intersection package needs to be cleanly removed if the other
> > package is later removed and registered again with the installation
> > system.
> 
> If you look at how I packaged the Star Browser, you'll see that every 
> package-dependent extension is in its own package. So there are no 
> modifications to the base StarBrowser package for each of the 
> add-ons.
> 

Perhaps I'm misunderstading but let's take an example: SBCeleste.  There
are messages in the *sbceleste-operations category in such Star Browser
classes as ItemChildren.  There are messages in *sbceleste-operations
categories in MailDB and MailMessage classes which I believe would be
considered part of Celeste.  These are examples of what I'm labelling as
"intersection".  Assume for the moment that Celeste was packaged.  When
either Celeste or Star Browser packages are removed (when such
capability becomes available) wouldn't these classes be removed and you
would therefore lose these messages?  More specifically you would lose
only some of the messages which might lead to a broken Star Browser
installation (maybe not, I'm not sure).  Additionally if you reinstall
Celeste you will be missing the linkage (assuming the intersection is
packaged with Star Browser as it is currently).

Am I wrong?  What piece of information am I missing?

Ken

> The installer looks to see if the appropriate dependent is installed 
> before installing the add-ons.
> 
> This is the way that Jacaranda's install should work.
> 
> I don't think that keeping uninstalled packages "dormant" would help 
> much, since you can just do a re-install of SB and not lose anything 
> (at least, this is the way it should be set up). Then you get the new 
> functionality.
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