RPM filesystem?

[Erik LaBianca]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: fedora-devel-list-bounces at redhat.com [mailto:fedora-devel-list-
> bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Jos Vos
> Sent: Thursday, June 03, 2004 11:48 AM
> To: Development discussions related to Fedora Core
> Subject: Re: RPM filesystem?
> 
> On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 10:31:51AM -0400, Tim Daly wrote:
> 
> > RPMS might not be the very best format for compressed packages but
> > they could make a convenient starting point. Fedora extras would
> > be so much sweeter if you only needed to mount the DVD containing
> > the RPMS and it all "just worked".
> 
> Interesting idea... but at leat the pre/post-install scripts, that
> are needed in many cases (e.g. ldconfig) cause significant problems
> if you would implement such a beast.
> 

I don't think rpm in its current state is the tool to handle this. It's
designed to provide reproducible from-source builds and to maintain an
on-disk collection of files. Pre/post scripts are pretty integral to its
functionality, as are mutable configuration files.

It seems to me what you're asking for is something like Mac OS X
application bundles, which are a pretty cool idea for any sort of
application code. I don't know exactly how they do it, but a simple way
to install an application by sticking its compressed bundle somewhere
would be VERY cool for the commercial software folks, etc.

At some point I think rpm either needs to diverge into another tool for
handling applications, or another tool will have to be created to do
this sort of thing. Library dependencies are and will continue to be a
big problem for outside distributors trying to produce rpm's of their
applications. LSB folks have been working on some of these issues, I
think.

--erik