Yo Dawg: Using a package management system to install a package management system(timetobleed.com)
timetobleed.com
Yo Dawg: Using a package management system to install a package management system
http://timetobleed.com/yo-dawg-using-a-package-management-system-to-install-a-package-management-system/
5 comments
Please, please do not start bringing 4chan memes on to Hacker News. I go here to get away from those, as they've overtaken reddit.
Don't judge a book by its cover. The article is good, very meaty.
I didn't mean that as a criticism of the article, I just didn't notice that was the actual title of it.
So whats up with haskell lately?
1. Using dpkg isn't that hard, and it's a huge win if you're already using a dpkg-based distribution (Debian/Ubuntu). "apt-get source libX; change stuff; dpkg-buildpackage". That wasn't so hard now, was it?
There's also tools to automate the creation of debian control files for packages that don't already have them. It's really not that difficult as long as you aren't building particularly complex packages.
2. Author claims that SCM for local builds is hard. I'm not sure how pacman solves this - sure, you can auto-apply patches from the build script, but you still generally have to redo that sort of thing every time the original package updates. If you really want to keep your repository small, there's nothing wrong with just keeping the patches and debian directories in SCM and bashing together a script to check out a buildable copy for you.
3. Adding an extra package manager on top of an existing one can be a huge mistake. Suddenly you've got to manage two repositories, which means twice as much maintenance as well as potential interdependency issues. It also means you've got a much more involved bringup process for new servers.