Self-Contained Installs ( Re: Tandem Expand )

On Wed, Dec 02, 1998 at 09:41:29AM -0500, Gavin Thomas Nicol wrote:
> > I have a qustion. Should we have some sort of VSTa name service? I mean,
> > a lot of the problems involved in using purely symbolic names for things
> > is getting a consistant and expectable result every time.
>
> Well, I was just installing Office 2000 yesterday, and what David Jeske said
> hit me in spades as I watched the install process.
>
> We all know the problems caused by windows install programs that install
> things all over the system because they need to live in "special" places
> in order for things to work well (just try installing things in
> non-default places and watch what breaks). Worse, uninstall doesn't
> always clear everything that was installed off the machine, so you often
> get to a point where your disk is half full of crud that you don't need,
> but are not sure that you can delete.
 
> I think this is a clear example of why we need per-process maps and
> mount overlays... with these, the programs, at starup, would simply make
> the namespace looks like they need it to be, but have the actual
> *installation* of the program be purely local. Uninstall would be a
> snap.

It sounds like you want an installation of a pacakge to entirely self
contained. Example: You install VSTaOffice2001 on Node FishStick. Then
you move VO2001 from /usr/local/ to /usr (it still works). Then you move
it Node CodFillette (it still works).

I like the NeXTStep encapsulation of software, but I'm not sure it's
perfect. It seems that managing quasi-system resources (like libraries)
via this scheme is difficult, but I would *love* for it to work.

Maybe something like:
If a file is a "quasi-system" resource, it is either in a specific
location (i.e. /usr/lib) or has a special attribute set, which would cause
the VFS to follow and maintain a separate table of these resources.

That way we wouldn't need something like ld.so to manage this junk.

I'm not sure that I'd like something similar for programs tho. I mean, it
might make for a messy system, where I would be able to run 16 different
copies of netscape for example. If we could have a per user method to
manage different versions.... (hint, hint, Jeske)

Anyway, I love the idea of modular self-contained applications and
resources. **If** we have tools and an easy scheme to manage them.

Ciao!

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