NetBSD‘s Packages Collection aka
pkgsrc now has support for an experimental new framework called “pkgviews”.
This framework, finally allowing multiple versions of one package to co-exist
without conflicts (among other great features), was first proposed by Alistair
Crooks at EuroBSDCon
2002 and has been integrated into pkgsrc by Johnny C. Lam, who just posted
a User’s
guide to the tech-pkg ml.
This should make dependency hell a bit easier. Wonder how it works. Hope this technology leaks into other packaging systems.
I just got involved in pkgsrc-wip (work-in-progress),
which is the first step and review-phase for entering
‘real’ pkgsrc, and I’ve submitted my first package.
I read a bit on BUILDLINK prior to that, but didn’t
use it. Got back a comment on that; “Use BUILDLINK2”,
so ok, maybe I should catch up on what BUILDLINK and
BUILDLINK2 really are. Haven’t found time for that
yet. Now I see this, and they’ve introduced BUILDLINK3!
So, hey, wait a minute! Let me catch up! You’re at 3
and I’m not yet at 1. 🙂
My impression is that NetBSD on some aspects are ‘cutting the edge’, to a lager extent than other OS’es. pkgviews seems like a Strong functionality.
pkgviews, really a best solution for conflicts.
No need to worry about conflicts anymore..
What the hell do they think? We had /opt based package system for years, and it was much more simple. And UNIONFS makes manipulation with PATH/MANPATH unnecessary. Furthermore, it worked fine on ANY system, not just BSD (think Linux with it’s moronic package systems).