22 Nov
2020
22 Nov
'20
7:39 a.m.
On Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 6:19 PM Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
1) No intention to slight debian in any way.
2) dpkg was definitely an improvement over FreeBSds ports scheme. But...
In fact freebsd did have a pkg system for ports before that --- which was
basically similar to 1983 SysIII scheme
FreeBSD's ports/pkg system did keep track of what was installed on the
system. There was a database in /var/db so pkg_delete could remove things
and pkg_which to know what pkg a given file belonged to.
It was first-ish, but there was some package system for the early linux
root disks. I think this is how SLS started, but I might be misremembering.
But despite being early, and being ported to other BSDs, it sucked at
upgrading for 20-odd years until it was completely rewritten.... latter day
pkg is so much better, though its repo management has been a little weak
relative to the professional efforts in the linux world.
/usr/ports none the less was ground breaking because it handled both the
local patching, the build depends and the packaging under one umbrella.
It's been on the whole a good thing and has reinvented itself several times
over the years.
When I was managing SunOS systems it seemed like everyone rolled their own.
There was nothing like VMSINSTALL...
Warner
3) also as I understand (and larry feel free to correct me here as a better
chronicler of things Linux than I) but I believe that
the big thing rpm
added was the DB like DEC's setld and system Sun had used which us what I
was refering too.
Pls remember that I was trying to chronicle the basic ideas and some of
the motivation which is what Henry asked. And that the original driver
was to support ISVs installs. So I was trying to explain the history of
what we did at the time.
The be fair one of the more vocal people in the early 80s was Heinz who
occasionally add color here. I remember Heinz trying to push us to an ABI
and not stop at an API.
Today most of the ISVs have abandoned Unix except for the Mac. Msft and
the phones have taken that. And the package mngr has been replaced by the
app store which has.much great use than any of the current Unix packaging
schemes. Funny how the profit motive drove that.
Working for one of the few ISVS that do package SW for Unix we basically
support two schemes. Apple Mac installs and RPM because that is were the
primary customer base has been. I'd not about goodness or being better or
being first. It's economic (Larry and I bemoan this a lot).
So pls don't take it as a comment about anything other than trying to
answer as much of the early history as I could.
Heinz, Jon, Larry you all lived this on the commercial side. Care to add
anything?
Clem
On Sat, Nov 21, 2020 at 6:31 PM Gregg Levine <gregg.drwho8(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Hello!
I, myself normally run Slackware Linux. It uses package management in
the form of compressed tar files, and a flat file store of the names.
It also has a tool which when run will show the user what's there, and
what they do if need be. In fact Slackware predates Red Hat by about
four years. (Pat and his CS professor introduced themselves to one
much earlier one, which was SLS. Neither liked it, and the Prof was
convinced that Pat could do better.)
-----
Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8(a)gmail.com
"This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."
On Sat, Nov 21, 2020 at 1:54 PM <arnold(a)skeeve.com> wrote:
--
Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual
Things were pretty much ad hoc. Commercial software likely came
as tar/cpio tapes to install however the vendor wanted. Free software
was from USENET in source code, so again, however people wanted.
The AT&T Unix PC (7300 / 3B1) in the late 80s had a file format
for installing software from floppy and tracked what was installed,
but that was unique to it.
Package managers as we know them today really became a big thing
with Linux. Redhat's RPM was one of the earliest.
My two cents; I'm sure others remember it differently.
Arnold
Henry Bent <henry.r.bent(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello All,
>
> I know I have asked this before, but I am curious about any new
replies or
> insight. How did package management start?
Were sites keeping track
of
> packages installed in a flat file that you
could grep (as god
intended)
> somewhere, or were upgrades and additions
simply done without
significant
> announcement? At what point did someone
decide, 'Hey, we need to
have a
> central way to track additional
software"?
>
> I know of DEC's setld and SGI's inst in the latter half of the '80s.
What
was the
mechanism before that?
-Henry