Mail Archives: djgpp/2000/07/28/03:25:04
> Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2000 20:30:28 +0100
> From: Richard Dawe <rich AT phekda DOT freeserve DOT co DOT uk>
> >
> > The default DSMs must be so general that they are useless. We might
> > as well ask that zippo be able to install without any DSM anywhere in
> > sight. All it takes is unzip the package and pray...
>
> I think there's a bit of confusion here. I think Kalum is referring to the
> DSMs that are distributed with zippo.
I understand that, and those were the DSMs I was referring to as
well.
> On the to-do list is a way of
> matching the ZIP file name to its parent package, when the ZIP file does
> not contain a DSM. That way a user could do e.g.:
>
> zippo -i sed302b.zip
>
> sed302b.zip does not (IIRC) contain a DSM. Since zippo has a small
> database of available packages, it could scan this and match sed302b.zip
> to the parent DSM. Then it knows how to install sed.
Why would zippo need a DSM file to know ``how to install a package''?
A simple installation boils down to just unzipping the package over
the old files, and that's it; there's no need for a DSM for this.
Anything smarter than a simple unzip must require a non-trivial DSM
file which cannot possibly come with zippo, unless you, the zippo
maintainers, invest a lot of effort into writing up such non-trivial
DSMs. (If you do that, those DSMs might as well be simply added to
the *.zip files on SimTel.NET, instead of waiting for maintainers to
do so. ;-)
In other words, I was arguing that the default DSMs must be simple
enough to not convey anything but the ``common-knowledge'' type of
info, which is hardly specific to the packages. Such a common
knowledge might as well be simply built into zippo to begin with.
Am I missing something?
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