Ok, how bout SuSE 9.0?

[Jay R. Ashworth]

On Mon, May 24, 2004 at 04:25:36PM -0400, Bill Vermillion wrote:
> > > Then why not change those installs to work like a typical pkg_inst
> > > with binaries, so that it will automatically find the correct
> > > dependancies and install them.  At least the ones I ran across in
> > > Linux [and I'm no Linux expert] required me to go fetch what was
> > > needed.  The computers are smart and fast enough that they should
> > > do some of this work :-)
> 
> > Yeah, Bill; it's called apt-rpm.
> 
> > Or yum.
> 
> Mark hadn't mentioned those and I'd not heard of them. I've heard
> of apt-get though which given that name can I assume it is part of
> an apt* family as pkg* is?

apt-rpm is basically a port of apt-get from .deb to .rpm; I gather
it and yum both provide infrastructure as well.

> > > That WAS a problem in FreeBSD.  And that was because so many of
> > > the install scripts were Perl and Perl version dependant.  So
> > > all the install scripts were re-written to use on shell of c
> > > programs.  
> 
> > Well, *that's* overkill...
> 
> Not to their way of thinking, and it also meant that the OS was not
> dependant on a 3rd party application.  A 'minimal' version - base
> OS and many /usr things will fit in 200MB - and not having Perl
> required to install that helps keep it down.  That means you can
> build slim dedicated routeres and firewalls in a minimum of
> space.

How is perl any *more* "third party" than any of the *rest* of the
stuff in a given install?  :-)

> > > The additional reason was that Perl has grown so large they didn't
> > > want to have that as part of the Base OS that they keep slim so
> > > that it can be used in standalone systems that don't need all the
> > > fluff.  Now you can install the one distributed or the newer
> > > version [ which goes into /usr/local ] and a 'use-perl' [I think I
> > > have that right, lets you set the version you wish to use at that
> > > time.
> 
> > Then you make an install-perl that's stripped and tiny, and use that.
> 
> Part of the problem was default installs required the 5.005_03 and
> since this were going to have to be re-written to work with the
> newer version - they decided to make the move to keep everything
> using sources over which they had complete control.
> 
> This way the end users could run any version of Perl they wanted.
> 
> Their reasons given sounded good.

If you want to completely rewrite hundreds of installers, I guess.

People are expensive, and not many people are building embedded
devices...

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
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        "They had engineers in my day, too."  -- Perry Vance Nelson