Supporting distro re-packaging (Was: [sclug] Linux Apprentice Wanted !)

[Roland Turner SCLUG]

A random thought on this thread while it occurs to me, Klik[1] solves a
substantial part of this. Essentially what it does, and what LSB strives
to do by slightly more elegant means, is to decouple system installation
from package installation. They also solve the multiple-3p-version and
multiple-builds-of-same-3p-versions in the only way that it can be
solved; multiple complete copies (per-user rather than per-package, but
the idea is the same).

So, to conquer the world, all that we have to do is port Debian, RedHat
and SUSE (and perhaps some others) to

(a) install their own variant as need be of a basic LSB instance

and

(b) put all of their other packages in independent universes

Then a package author can build with dependencies from an arbitrary
universe (but hopefully only from one...) and the user can use a tool
much like to "simply" download and install all of the dependencies.

_Then_ it will be possible for users to reliably switch from the
debian.org build to the apache.org build when seeking support on Apache
forums. Perhaps.


Mwuhahahaha....

- Raz

1: http://klik.atekon.de/