Date:	Tue, 6 May 1997 08:25:13 -0400 (EDT)
From:	Pierre Phaneuf <pp AT 55-174 DOT hy DOT cgocable DOT ca>
Reply-To:	pierre AT tycho DOT com
To:	OpenDOS Mailing List <opendos AT delorie DOT com>
Subject:	Re: DOS utilities (was Re: A few FS notions)
In-Reply-To:	<Pine.LNX.3.95.970505220657.9545n-100000@capslock.com>
Message-ID:	<Pine.LNX.3.95.970506082020.19030A-100000@55-174.hy.cgocable.ca>
MIME-Version:	1.0

On Mon, 5 May 1997, Mike A. Harris wrote:

> Also, the binary dists should NOT come with source right now
> IMHO, and even later on, separate source distribs make more
> sense.

I was thinking about a scheme like Red Hat RPMs, where you can get
.i386.rpm, .alpha.rpm and .sparc.rpm, just as well as .src.rpm...
Developers get the .src.rpm (after installing a base package that will
install the bare minimum AND the package manager).

> However one shouldn't need to download 30M of source code just to
> get the source for SUBST either.  I think that it should be
> broken down into several pieces such as a BASE source distrib
> including the kernel, as well as COMMAND.COM, and the headers for
> EVERYTHING, then one only need download the "ODfileutils" source,
> or the "OD diskutils" source, or the "driver source", etc...

Exactly! I see the BASE package as a diskette image with FDISK, FORMAT,
SYS, the package manager, a script or installation program to let you
create a partition or use an existing one, format it if it isn't, SYS it
and install the package manager. No tools, they'd come in a separate
package, with or without sources, so you can updates your tools to the
latest version without doing stuff all over your hard drive...

Pierre Phaneuf

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