[olpc-software] Package manager stuff

[Stephen J. Smoogen]

On 3/14/06, Mike Hearn <mike at plan99.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-03-14 at 17:06 -0500, Alan Cox wrote:
> > Ah but the existing applications don't know that. So if you watch one directory
> > in the file manager and you edit the underlying view what occurs.
>
> You're right! Darned facts :) I don't know, what does occur?
>
> I'd expect the change to be reflected up, so if I'm watching a directory
> that is a composite of A and B, and a file is added in A then the watch
> says "new file!". And if a file with the same name is then added to B,
> nothing happens, because the file in A overrides it and so nothing has
> changed view-wise.
>
> > Then there is
> > the whole problem of union mounts of an underlying changing network file
> > store, which raises horrible questions about semantics and which the FUSE
> > work just armwaves.
>
> Hmm, what kind of questions? I'd expect the semantics of file watches on
> unions to be something like "if I can compare two snapshots of a
> directory and see the difference then there was a change, otherwise
> there wasn't". So it would work the same as a naive polling based
> implementation would. Why is that affected by network vs something else?
>
> > Must be a different planet to the one I live in.
>
> Well, most problems I get asked to fix with Windows boxes these days are
> spyware/malware related. I don't remember the last time something broke
> because an installer downgraded a shared library. That's partly because
> modern installers (newer InstallShields, NSIS, etc) are careful not to
> do that, and partly because the core libraries MS distribute are pretty
> much stagnant (and get new names when they are changed).
>
>

I polled the guys here who have to do SMS pushes, and the DLL problem
is one of their main problems to have to test around everytime they do
an update or a new package. Trying to deal with JDK, acrobat, and even
the MS Office products can take a lot of fine-tuning 'according to
them' to deal with DLL stuff. And I have been spending most of my week
cleaning up my parents computer because Installshield of a product
overwrote a DLL that it shouldnt have...

The Net-Octopus fellows and the fellows dealing with the Darwin side
pretty much said the same issue with the Mac's. Its ok in most cases
if you are dealing with a system by itself, but trying to deal with
multiple systems that have local administrators ends up with XYZ-1.2
app getting the wrong dll because of XYZ-1.1 app.

--
Stephen J Smoogen.
CSIRT/Linux System Administrator