>>>>> "Keith" == Keith Hodges <keith_hodges at yahoo.co.uk> writes:

Keith> The last thing we need is yet another package management system, when we have
Keith> hardly started using the features of the existing ones.

I think this says more about the existing ones (including Sake/Packages) than
about the desire for something that works.

Keith> Oh yes it is all very well to go and drum up political support for
Keith> various ideas and complain that it will not handle the needs of
Keith> millions of coders, but the reality is that it is a lot of hot air!
Keith> (see next paragraph)

If you build it, they will come.

Nobody was *clamoring* for the CPAN before it existed.  But once it did,
people started finding it easier to share their modules, and use other
people's modules.

I'm looking for that kind of ease.  Where I can say:

  "Here is a new parser generator I just created.  it requires an XML
  package.  I think it runs on 3.9 but I've only tested it on 3.10."

and then publish it somewhere.

And then you, coming along, can say:

  "I need a parser generator.  Oh, here's one Randal wrote.  I'll
  install it... oh it looks like it needs an XML parser, so that's
  getting installed too."

And then later, I can say:

 "Oh, I have an update, and it requires a newer version of the XML parser."

And then you can notice that update in some tool, and press a button, and you
get both the newer version of the XML parser and my parser generator.

When it's *that* simple, I think 90% of the people will be happy.

This isn't the goal of Sake/Packages.  So Keith, stop derailing this
conversation with what *you* want to do with Sake.  I'm not talking about
configuration management.

I'm talking about simple "publish" and "subscribe" options.

Make it as easy as listed above, including scaling so that 20 people can all
"publish" in the same 5-minute window without knowing a darn thing about each
other, and you'll have what I'm setting as the goal.  Your Packages isn't
meant for that.  Squeakmap is a lot closer, but is missing a few things,
perhaps borrowed from Universes.  We just all need to come together to make
this happen.

-- 
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<merlyn at stonehenge.com> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Smalltalk/Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See http://methodsandmessages.vox.com/ for Smalltalk and Seaside discussion