Sender: rich AT delorie DOT com
Message-ID: <38F08939.788D188E@bigfoot.com>
Date: Sun, 09 Apr 2000 14:44:25 +0100
From: Richard Dawe <richdawe AT bigfoot DOT com>
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To: Laurynas Biveinis <lauras AT softhome DOT net>
CC: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>,
        DJGPP Workers <djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com>,
        Richard Dawe <rich AT tudor21 DOT net>,
        Zippo Workers <zippo-workers AT egroups DOT com>
Subject: Re: DJGPP library DSMs
References: <Pine DOT SUN DOT 3 DOT 91 DOT 1000409082635 DOT 7469D-100000 AT is> <38F05E81 DOT CC9295A1 AT softhome DOT net>
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Reply-To: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com

Hello.

Laurynas Biveinis wrote:
> (I'm CCing Richard directly, because zippo-workers is down for good.)

I've taken this to private mail - it seems to be working for me at the
moment.

> DSM might allow multiple 'author' etc. directives as well, what about
> it, Rich? I see that current libzippo's code does not support that, but
> we can easy add that.

Yes, that's trivial to change.

[ BTW: libzippo is a library that has many of zippo's core functions -
  DSM parsing, manifest parsing, ZIP handling. ]

> >    Example DSM files that Laurynas sent me don't help here, because
> >    they fail to mention any non-trivial dependencies.
[snip]
> They *should* be mentioned, they weren't not because of intent of
> 'depends-on' but due to fact, that it is hard to write dependencies for
> about 100 packages. At first Rich wrote DSMs with virtually no
> dependencies, I've added trivial run-time ones and some source building
> dependencies.

At the time I wrote the DSMs, there were none at all. I wanted to do a
_complete_ reinstall of DJGPP, so I had to write DSMs for a bunch of
packages, so I skipped the dependencies when I wrote them. I was intending
to revisit them at a later date. That date is still later for most of the
packages - we need to do more work on zippo first.
 
> > 6) It is not clear what do we ned to put under `mailing-list',
> >    `newsgroup', and related directives.
[snip]
> I think it is best to allow several those directives in a single DSM
> with a comment (or even another directive) with a mailing list's
> description.

Yes, this is a good idea.

> > 7) Perhaps the installer and uninstaller should automatically run
> >    install-info with the appropriate arguments (these arguments are
> >    pretty standard).  This way, people won't need to put these
> >    commands into the DSM files, which is error-prone.
> 
> No, I think it is up to indvidual packages: installers should be
> generic, they don't know very good, which packages require it and which
> don't.

I personally have mixed feelings about this. I still haven't used
install-info. I would prefer all actions to be taken on installation to be
included in the DSM. That way, one could install the package without a
package manager, by looking at the commands in the DSM.

Why is putting these install-info commands in the DSM error-prone?

I intend to write a DSM writing guide at some point. I could describe
running install-info in this guide.

Bye,

-- 
Richard Dawe
richdawe AT bigfoot DOT com ICQ 47595498 http://www.bigfoot.com/~richdawe/