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 Forum index » Taking the Puppy out for a walk » Suggestions
The State of Package Management
Moderators: Flash, Ian, JohnMurga
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Should Puppy's package format be changed?
Yes, without backwards compatibility.
26%
 26%  [ 10 ]
Yes, with backwards compatibility.
26%
 26%  [ 10 ]
No, but the PET format should be standardized/stricter.
21%
 21%  [ 8 ]
No, the PET format works fine.
26%
 26%  [ 10 ]
Total Votes : 38

Author Message
noryb009

Joined: 20 Mar 2010
Posts: 508
PostPosted: Mon 20 Feb 2012, 19:12    Post subject:  
We at least took a sample* of the signed up "Suggestions" board readers. 16/25 people voted for a new format, which is 64% - almost two thirds of the users. You are welcome to put up a poll in a more viewed area, but until we get more data, we should to use the data we have - which is to create a new package format.

* I can't link directly on the forum as the link contains brackets. Real path is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_(statistics)
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jpeps

Joined: 31 May 2008
Posts: 2419
PostPosted: Mon 20 Feb 2012, 19:16    Post subject:  
noryb009 wrote:
We at least took a sample* of the signed up "Suggestions" board readers. 16/25 people voted for a new format, which is 64% - almost two thirds of the users. You are welcome to put up a poll in a more viewed area, but until we get more data, we should to use the data we have - which is to create a new package format.

* I can't link directly on the forum as the link contains brackets. Real path is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_(statistics)


Simply incredible...
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jemimah


Joined: 26 Aug 2009
Posts: 4309
Location: Tampa, FL
PostPosted: Mon 20 Feb 2012, 19:55    Post subject:  
amigo wrote:
Thanks for helping out there with the meaty answers. So, when you boot a 'frugal' installation, the intrid (a fat one?) is used, setting up the main sfs as the root partiton, then the save file is unioned above that? Is that about the flow of things?


The "fat initrd" was pretty much a passing thing. 99% of the time a small initrd is used.



This is old but mostly still accurate:
http://puppylinux.com/development/howpuppyworks.html

I'm curious what architecture you would design to solve the bootable usb problem. You've got to keep the system as small as possible to fit on a small drive and still leave space for the user's files, and you need to avoid disk i/o as much as possble, both because it is slow and because writes cause wear on the drive. As far as I know puppy is the only system that is really designed to work well under these circumstances.
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jpeps

Joined: 31 May 2008
Posts: 2419
PostPosted: Mon 20 Feb 2012, 20:07    Post subject:  
jemimah wrote:

This is old but mostly still accurate:
http://puppylinux.com/development/howpuppyworks.html


jemimah, 2byte just posted that a few responses ago Smile

Maybe a poll for how many people read it...
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jemimah


Joined: 26 Aug 2009
Posts: 4309
Location: Tampa, FL
PostPosted: Mon 20 Feb 2012, 20:20    Post subject: Re: Package management  
2byte wrote:

Jemimah, I agree Barry should not rewrite woof to suit us, but I don’t think he would have to. I am not a woof expert by any means but there has to be a place during the build when the pets and packages are being added where a branch could be made to a separate routine that could assemble the package/file info for use in the database. If we presented a plugin bash routine that would do this surely he could call it from woof at the appropriate spot.

The plugin could produce a record of the package/pet with a complete list of files. The file paths, permissions, owner:group, size, time added, and md5 could be produced. Probably the package type and, if it’s a distro package, where it came from could also be recorded. If the package/pet has a dependency list, build script or info, or pinstall or doinst script then that could be recorded too. At the very least we could produce the package name and related file list.



I'm just not seeing what you think this DB is going to do for you. What functional enhancement is this going to provide?

You can pull the package name, dependencies, origin, and related file list out of puppy's existing DB.
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jpeps

Joined: 31 May 2008
Posts: 2419
PostPosted: Mon 20 Feb 2012, 20:41    Post subject: Re: Package management  
jemimah wrote:



I'm just not seeing what you think this DB is going to do for you. What functional enhancement is this going to provide?

You can pull the package name, dependencies, origin, and related file list out of puppy's existing DB.


For starters, I'd like to see names in the builtin list that would match specs in the woof list.
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noryb009

Joined: 20 Mar 2010
Posts: 508
PostPosted: Mon 20 Feb 2012, 20:48    Post subject:  
jpeps: People not voting doesn't mean that they don't care - it means they don't know about the thread or they don't understand enough about Puppy to vote. However, since you probably won't agree with my point of view, let's try it another way: please read through the beginner's help, and even the users, sections and see how many threads are simple "How do I install ___" or "updating ___ broke it". I haven't heard anyone ever say how Puppy's package management is good, outside the common packages of firefox, seamonkey, etc.
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jpeps

Joined: 31 May 2008
Posts: 2419
PostPosted: Mon 20 Feb 2012, 20:54    Post subject:  
noryb009 wrote:
jpeps: People not voting doesn't mean that they don't care - it means .....



It means nothing...
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disciple

Joined: 20 May 2006
Posts: 6179
Location: Auckland, New Zealand
PostPosted: Mon 20 Feb 2012, 20:56    Post subject: Re: Package management  
2byte wrote:
Package management.

I think we all agree that full super duper pm is not possible with puppy.

No, I for one don't agree - I think that is nonsense.
And particularly for a woof based puppy - what are the barriers to using the native package manager of the parent distro?
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jemimah


Joined: 26 Aug 2009
Posts: 4309
Location: Tampa, FL
PostPosted: Mon 20 Feb 2012, 23:00    Post subject:  
Big_bass apparently got it working pretty well with TXZpup, but I guess it didn't catch on and he went to go work on Porteus instead.
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Lobster
Official Crustacean


Joined: 04 May 2005
Posts: 15109
Location: Paradox Realm
PostPosted: Mon 20 Feb 2012, 23:52    Post subject:  
Quote:
but I guess it didn't catch on


Joe's solution was simple, stable and just worked.
As an alchemist (one of my hobbies) I believe everything needs a little magic ingredient. Rolling Eyes
Joe may have needed a Raspberry Pi

. . . hey where is that slice? Wink
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/PARM
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2byte

Joined: 09 Oct 2006
Posts: 356
PostPosted: Tue 21 Feb 2012, 10:20    Post subject:  
I do agree with noryb009 that the pet spec needs improving. But I don’t think it should be quite as drastic as the proposal. With build scripts in mind, the pet spec needs just the information required to reproduce the pet package and a dependencies list (other packages required for the pet to function). A recommends field would be nice. Anything more than that burdens the packager.
My 2 cents.
Disciple wrote:
No, I for one don't agree - I think that is nonsense.
And particularly for a woof based puppy - what are the barriers to using the native package manager of the parent distro?

The barriers? A different manager for each flavor of puppy? The lack of a complete package database, let alone one in the parent distro format. A package manager from the parent distro will have no clue about the majority of packages in puppy, nor does the current ppm. How could they when 2/3 of the data is missing? Not nonsense, fact. How is a general user to remove or update a package that was included in the woof-installed-files?

jemimah wrote:
Big_bass apparently got it working pretty well with TXZpup, but I guess it didn't catch on and he went to go work on Porteus instead.

There's another barrier. If the package manager is not in the ‘official’ puppy it is doomed.
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Moose On The Loose


Joined: 24 Feb 2011
Posts: 278
PostPosted: Tue 21 Feb 2012, 12:08    Post subject:  
[quote="jemimah"]
amigo wrote:

The "fat initrd" was pretty much a passing thing. 99% of the time a small initrd is used.




This brings to mind a suggestion I made before. Perhaps if things are being worked on, it should be considered:

Make the layers like this:

*************************
Current work
*************************
root & my-documents & perhaps my-applications
*************************
All hardware related settings installed pets etc
*************************
Any loaded extending SFS files
*************************
The main SFS file
************************

This way, when someone changes machines or changes versions of puppy the documents he is working on etc can appear in the new machine or version without trouble. It would mean having two save files but other than that it would not be a major change to the way things are done except keeping track of the files from the pets. We know what directories have the
settings.

The order I show has the pets replacing the SFS files when there is a conflict. I think that this is the right order because the pets are usually done only after the first re-boot if you want to use some SFS.
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2byte

Joined: 09 Oct 2006
Posts: 356
PostPosted: Tue 21 Feb 2012, 12:37    Post subject:  
Sorry jemimah, I didn't mean to ignore you.
jemimah wrote:
I'm just not seeing what you think this DB is going to do for you. What functional enhancement is this going to provide?

For me personally it would allow me to tailor, maintain, and upgrade the release of puppy that works best for me and my hardware for as long as I own that hardware. I was recently forced to purchase a new kit and believe it or not there are only two lunux releases that will work on it (given my skill set) and they are FatDog and the Slacko beta. Not Ubuntu, Mint, Antix, Mepis, and after a couple more I stopped. Puppy may be a hobby to some or even most but it is more than that to me. How long will FatDog and Slacko be maintained?

Quote:
You can pull the package name, dependencies, origin, and related file list out of puppy's existing DB.

No you can't, unless I am very mistaken. Choose a package from the woof-installed-files list in the DB, how can you get that information for it using puppy?
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jemimah


Joined: 26 Aug 2009
Posts: 4309
Location: Tampa, FL
PostPosted: Tue 21 Feb 2012, 14:14    Post subject:  
Changing the package manager alone won't fix your problem. Someone would need to build the pets you are going to use to upgrade. Since you have made pet building more complex and annoying, you've simply created more work for the maintainer to do. Creating pets that will upgrade core components without breaking things is often more work than releasing a new version of a puplet.

---

For woof-installed packages, you can find a copy of the pet.specs in /root/woof-installed-packages. The pet.specs contains the package name, dependencies, and origin. The list of files is in /root/packags/builtin_files/<packagename>. Barry uses a compressed format that is different than the filelist for user installed packages, but all the information is there. The only thing that is discarded is the pinstall and puninstall scripts - most packages don't have these anyway.
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