The DUB package manager

[Russel Winder]

On Sun, 2013-02-17 at 16:32 -0500, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
[…]
> I'm not real big on the idea of OS package managers. Not when Unix is
> in the picture anyway. I'm getting really fed up with software that has
> a "download / install" webpage populated with totally different
> instructions for an endless, yet always incomplete, list of Linux
> variants. And *maybe* BSD. And then on top of that, the poor *project*
> maintainers have to maintain all of that distro-specific cruft. Unless
> they're lucky and the project is big enough that the ditro maintainers
> are willing to waste *their* time converting the package into something
> that only works on their own distro.
> 
> I believe I can sum up my thoughts with: "Fuck that shit."

Generally I am of the opposite view, that using the distribution's
package management is by far the best way (*). When a language decides
it has to ignore platforms and provide it's own, I generally think
"Another introverted, self obsessed language, ignoring platform's
management structures."

Trying to cover every platform is though a real pain in the proverbials,
I totally agree with that. But let's look at the need for coverage:

	Windows, OS X, Debian (hence Ubuntu, Mint), Fedora (hence RHEL, CentOS)

after that the user base is currently so low that people probably expect
to fend for themselves.  Windows and OS X require handling because of
the very nature of the infrastructure. Debian and Fedora need a good
relationship with a recognized packager to get stuff into the
distributions and repackaged for each version. This also goes for
MacPorts, and Brew (I am guessing Fink is dying?).


(*) Debian has GCC and Python management taped nicely, multiple separate
versions installable side-by-side and usable. On the other hand Debian
totally sucks at handling anything related to Java because they insist
on one and only one version of an artefact. It seems they believe the
WORA fiction.

-- 
Russel.
=============================================================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder at ekiga.net
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel at winder.org.uk
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder
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