Package Universes and Squeakmap

Lex Spoon lex at lexspoon.org
Fri Aug 17 21:37:43 UTC 2007


"Jason Johnson" <jason.johnson.081 at gmail.com> writes:
> Aren't universes and Monticello configurations in the same space?  If so, do
> you guys have any interest in just switching to Universes for your package
> management so we don't have to maintain so many different ways of doing the
> same thing?  The software can stay simpler (and therefor easier to maintain)
> if each package (e.g. Universes) don't have to support every possible
> format.


I have always had the same question.  With a universes approach, you
would set up a package universe that includes the blessed versions of
each individual Monticello package.  Then you would have a virtual
package that depends on all of the individual ones.  Installing that
virtual package would get you the latest blessed version of each
individual package.


In theory it is less general.  However, I find micro-managing
individual package versions to be too fine-grained.  Plus, if your
individual packages are actually meaningful on their own, other
projects will have their own dependencies on the individual packages,
and you really want to avoid the headache of solving jigsaw puzzles
like "A 1.2 depends on B version 1.5, but C 1.2 depends on B version
1.4, so maybe I can stick with C 1.1, which depends on..." etc. etc.


Anyway, if upstream authors use MCM's, then either PU needs to support
MCM's or one of the universe maintainers needs to post the individual
packages.  I would lean towards the latter as the first thing to try,
but maybe the former is useful as well.  It is worth looking into.


-Lex






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