[E-Lang] Thoughts on Installers

[Norman Hardy]

At 6:27 PM -0600 3/17/01, Wesley Felter wrote:
>
>That situation leaves us with a single installer that comes bundled with
>the OS, is mostly trusted by users, and installs declaratively packaged
>components. I suppose on this list I do not need to make the arguments for
>enforcing policies in one place. The Linux distributions are the leaders
>in this area with tools like RPM, Apt, and Red Carpet, although I still
>find some aspects lacking. For example, pervasive Unix assumptions about
>"globalness" (for lack of a better expression) are present in these tools,
>which in many cases will only run as root, will only install each package
>in one place (e.g. /usr, but not /home/wmf), and assume that all users
>see the same view of what components are installed. This is a real
>problem, because I have yet to find a way to install anything nontrivial
>on my Unix account at school without involving the local BOFHs.

I think that ideas such as durability: 
<http://cap-lore.com/CapTheory/KK/durability.html> can make
functions such as RPM really work. You can't remove B,  which A requires,
until you remove A.
-- 
Norman Hardy  <http://cap-lore.com/>