apt-get

[Dave Leimbach]

Matthew Dillon <dillon at xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

>     This does solidify my opinion that we need VFS environments to provide
>     truely isolated setups for various subsystems (e.g. apache vs login user
>     vs root vs mail vs whatever), and then run the port/packaging system
>     within each environment.  The one thing I have *always* dreaded when
>     doing large installs is that I would have half a dozen subsystems all
>     working properly and then I would try to install something for some
>     other subsystem and blow up one of the existing subsystems.  UNIX has
>     this wonderful concept of a 'user' which seriously under-used when it
>     comes to services.

I 100% concur :).  Any sort of VFS juju-majick or namespace-like thing that
DragonFly could have would be a big bonus for the state of the art for package
management.

I think you've got the right idea too in that the package management needs
to be run "per environment".   If we are going to have limited visibility 
of software packages on a per-user basis then each user should be able to
customize it's packages...  

However.... what if you have 50 users who want to run KDE?  How to map a 
"shared namespace" across these users so they all use the same version?

Clearly there are times when full isolation makes sense and another time when
some sharing is necessary for efficiency.

This makes me think whatever is done in VFS ought to work with GID's as well
as UID's.  Users who don't want the common GID mapped views or namespaces 
should have the option to opt out of certain configurations.

If this is done well enough the concept of a PATH could change quite a bit :).

I don't know if everyone is interested in that kind of radical change... Maybe
I've been playing with Plan 9 too much :)

Dave
> 
> 					-Matt
> 					Matthew Dillon 
> 					<dillon at xxxxxxxxxxxxx>