Last DMD made me truly breathless -- for the wrong reasons

Gregor Richards Richards at codu.org
Wed Nov 15 14:43:44 PST 2006


Producing native packages from DSSS builds is already on "the list."

And DSSS provides a large number of advantages that aren't in native 
packages, simply because DSSS is tailored towards D.

I completely understand that issues with pervasiveness of different 
installation systems and platforms, it's the core of my current job, and 
I designed DSSS with the forethought that it would at least as often be 
used simply to force fairly consistent installs for packaging systems as 
it would be for its net feature.  I've been trying to stress that the 
net feature is /not/ its primary feature, but certain parties who shall 
remain nameless have pressured me into bringing that future to the 
forefront.

  - Gregor Richards

Brad Roberts wrote:
> While DSSS is a great product in the vein of cpan and its ilk and I don't 
> want to diminish it's value, but for most unix flavors, there's native 
> packaging mechanisms that are preferred by the masses.
> 
> Explicitly stated:
>   for freebsd, ports is king
>       debian, .deb's and the various front ends is where it's at
>       redhat, .rpm and yum
>       windows, uh... installshield?  I dunno.. not my playground
>       etc...
> 
> My primary experience is with debian.  There there's wrappers around cpan 
> to facilitate creation of .deb from a cpan package should it not happen to 
> be already officially packaged up (an extreme rarity).  As a maintainer of 
> more systems than I care to, I value the uniformity that using a single 
> package management system brings.
> 
> So.. what would really go a long way, would be a way to easily create 
> native package for various platforms and a repository to be populated.  
> What would then work well would be for there to be a single 'starter' 
> package for D development:  probably a dmd/gdc installer + a hook to 
> register the native repository with the native install system (for debian 
> this would be adding a line to the /etc/apt/sources.list file).
> 
> DSSS could then mutate to a system for building and producing the 
> artifacts to go into the repository, maybe.
> 
> Anyway.. food for thought.
> 
> Later,
> Brad
> 
> On Wed, 15 Nov 2006, Jesse Phillips wrote:
> 
> 
>>Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2006 10:37:53 -0800
>>From: Jesse Phillips <Jesse.K.Phillips+Digitalmars at gmail.com>
>>Reply-To: digitalmars.D <digitalmars-d at puremagic.com>
>>To: digitalmars-d at puremagic.com
>>Newsgroups: digitalmars.D
>>Subject: Re: Last DMD made me truly breathless -- for the wrong reasons
>>
>>DSSS would make a good distro for dmd/build. May not be feasible now,
>>but some day.
>>
>>Georg Wrede wrote:
>>
>>>My experiences last night
>>>
>>>
>>>I've been doing production work in D for some six months now. Therefore
>>>I have been a bit reluctant to actually download the latest versions for
>>>testing, we've settled on 0.166 on Linux, and want to stay with it for
>>>some time past D 1.0.
>>>
>>>Yesterday I couldn't resist, so I installed .174 on my w2k laptop -- and
>>>I was in for a major jolt:
>>>
>>>Idly browsing dmd/bin I found that one of the exes actually had an icon.
>>>So I double-clicked it, and guess what, a simple wysiwyg GUI editor pops
>>>up! Wow, now we can make simple GUI apps right out of the box! And I
>>>found a small and nice text editor already configured for D there, too!
>>>
>>>How come I've missed the buzz? Well, I guess D development is really
>>>putting on an exponential speed. Hoy contenders, resistance is futile!
>>>
>>>Some research this morning revealed the day-after: I must have
>>>downloaded DFL in the spring and forgotten to erase the dm and dmd
>>>hierarchies before unzipping. Oh well, it's the small things, like always.
>>>
>>>
>>>Some observations
>>>
>>>While I actually believed I was using this "shrink-wrap-DMD", I had
>>>several different feelings about it:
>>>
>>> - wow, D is leaping forward -- where will we be in six months?!!
>>> - unfair to only provide GUI stuff for Windows
>>> - later it felt ok, since most D users are on Windows anyway
>>> - Walter's really out to impress the crap out of folks
>>>
>>>After my bitter fall to ground, I felt:
>>>
>>> - why not?
>>> - some freebies in there make it feel polished, and "bigger"
>>> - ok, it's not Eclipse, but it could be touted as "a largish example"
>>> - OTOH, it must be awkward for Digital Mars:
>>>    - quality issues
>>>    - rights issues
>>>    - the hassle, maintenance, support...
>>>    - uncertainty about continued support from the app authors
>>>    - upgrades syncing, especially waiting for the apps to catch up!
>>>    - fighting with folks about who's stuff to include
>>>
>>>
>>>Things learned
>>>
>>>Obviously Walter can't be burdened with all this. So, what's left?
>>>IMHO, we could re-examine the idea about there being "D distros".
>>>
>>>We could have a few distros, each trying to be more user friendly, more
>>>outa-the-zip usable, and later distros for specific things, like games
>>>development, office stuff development, systems stuff, etc. If Linux
>>>seems to prosper with it, then I see no reason why D couldn't.
>>>
>>>The DMD license could deny charging for such distros. At the same time
>>>the text would recommend contacting DM, "for very reasonable deals" on
>>>for-profit distribution, including book-sleeve CDs.
>>>
>>>This way Walter could concentrate on exactly what he's doing right now,
>>>and what he's better at than anybody else: rocketing D to places where
>>>no language has gone!
>>



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