NetBSD Packages Collection Gets 'pkgviews'

jschauma writes "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 MailingList."

Good start...

[StressedEd]

This is something that is always welcome. Its quite often the case that one would like the original version of s/w and new version coexisting during (say) a transitional period.

This can be a pain to manage, hopefully the migration of this kind of tool will ease the pain of this.

Depot begat Stow, who begat Pkgview?

[sparcv9]

This looks very similar to GNU Stow [gnu.org], which a derivative of CMU Depot. [cmu.edu] By the way, we (a University right down the street from CMU) also used an internal derivative of Depot, called Parcel, but we've mostly phased that out now.

Re:Depot begat Stow, who begat Pkgview?

[MobyTurbo]

This looks very similar to GNU Stow, which a derivative of CMU Depot.

They are well aware of that. From the article's link [netbsd.org]:

Package views is similar in spirit to the Encap Package Management System, the GNU Stow Project, and the Carnegie Mellon University Depot Configuration Management system:

http://www.encap.org/ http://www.gnu.org/software/stow/stow.html http://asg.web.cmu.edu/andrew2/depot/

However, these projects have a philosophy of "install anywhere, use in one place", whereas package views departs from that model with a philosophy that can roughly be summarized as "install in one place, use anywhere".

Re:Depot begat Stow, who begat Pkgview?

[Anonymous Coward]

May as well note that DragonFly [dragonflybsd.org] is going to attempt something similar, but with an alternate grade of 'hack quality' -- the intention in DragonFly is to allow filesystem overlays (union mounts on crack?) such that packages can be totally "convinced" that they're the only version of themselves installed.

It's hard to say (meaning, I haven't done my research) if DBSD's revisiting of the issue inspired the cleanup and release of pkgviews, or if that was proceeding quietly before Dillon-and-friends even thought

Re:Depot begat Stow, who begat Pkgview?

[jschauma]

It's hard to say (meaning, I haven't done my research) if DBSD's revisiting of the issue inspired the cleanup and release of pkgviews, or if that was proceeding quietly before Dillon-and-friends even thought to begin their stab.

Well, actually, it's quite easy to say :-) : DragonFlyBSD came into existence in July 2003. Package views, as noted above, were first presented by Alistair Crooks at EuroBSDCon 2002.

Re:I've used Pkgviews

[101percent]

If "Netcraft confirms that BSD is dying" than why does Netcraft.com run on FreeBSD?

Sweet

[b00m3rang]

The only gripe I've had with FreeBSD installs is that some packages depend on different versions of Apache, for example. While either would work, the scripts don't know that, and there's no way to get the two versions to coexist. Hopefully they'll adopt this functionality too.

Re:BSD Crowd Driven Away

[debilo]

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