From: kerce@cs.fsu.edu (Kingsley F. Kerce) Subject: Re: A discipline for packages Date: 30 Dec 1992 22:25:59 GMT
In article <725686556snx@crynwr.com> nelson@crynwr.com (Russell Nelson) writes:
You know something I've always hated about Unix (and people are
starting to hate about Windows)?
When you install a package, it inserts itself inextricably into
various places in your system.
What I would rather see is a subdirectory per package. For example,
/package/sendmail (and the corresponding subdirectories lib, src, cf,
man.1, man.5, man.8, bin, etc).
I think this is a very pertinent and reasonable concern.
There's software called `depot' which attempts to solve this problem.
Depot essentially stores installed software under a given directory,
say /usr/local/depot/package-name, and creates symbolic links to the
usual places e.g. /usr/local/bin, /usr/local/man, etc.
In addition, it maintains a database of the installed software so that
you can easily delete, replace, and modify the installed stuff.
Archie should be able to locate the latest version.
Give it a try -- the Depot package includes a nice PostScript document that
describes the system well (from USENIX proceedings, maybe?).