jacob-carlborg/orbit — Issue #2: Specification/Packaging Standards Concerns
Author: Wyatts
Created: 2011-12-24 17:04:58+00:00
State: open

I think this is a great idea, but I'm getting a strong "rubygems" vibe from it and that scares me because unless there are rigourous standards in place, packages turn out like gems and are nearly impossible for distros to package. (cf. http://blog.flameeyes.eu/2011/12/21/gems-make-it-a-battle-between-the-developer-and-the-packager). This is not a fate I'm fond of dealing with, and I have zero good memories of our large-scale rvm deployment at work, so I would like to offer what assistance and advice I might so as to ensure orbit doesn't fall into a miserable state. I'm not sure where or how far you're willing to take this conversation, so for now, I'd implore you to consider this document: http://dev.gentoo.org/~ulm/pms/head/pms.html if not skim the whole thing.

I've used a lot of package managers at this point, but I am now and will remain a Gentoo user because package management is _properly standardised_ and pleasant to deal with. It's a lot like BSD ports, if you've used that, only improved in pretty much every way possible. There are a number of ideas in there that I would love to see cribbed or strongly encourage the adoption of, but the real takeaway for now is probably that there need to be guarantees built into the system to prevent the sorts of issues Diego deals with. Thanks!

Cheers,
Wyatt

PS: "I'll probably explore the possibility of having spec and orb files written in D."
Why not use rdmd? (TDPL, pg 2)