Message-Id: <200007280723.KAA05744@mailgw1.netvision.net.il>
Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2000 10:22:57 +0200
To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
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From: "Eli Zaretskii" <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
CC: zippo-workers AT egroups DOT com, kalum AT lintux DOT cx, lauras AT softhome DOT net,
        djgpp AT delorie DOT com
In-reply-to: <39808DD4.D9212891@phekda.freeserve.co.uk> (message from Richard
	Dawe on Thu, 27 Jul 2000 20:30:28 +0100)
Subject: Re: [zippo-workers] Re: ANNOUNCE: DJGPP port of GNU Make 3.79.1 uploaded
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> 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?