[OpenIndiana-discuss] Package repositories?

[ken mays]

> Date: Tuesday, October 26, 2010, 1:28 AM
> On Tue, 26 Oct 2010 01:52:20 +0200,
> Alasdair Lumsden <alasdairrr at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
> > We will absolutely include things like Postfix. It
> drives me completely nuts that things like that are
> missing.
> > 
> > I do not want people having to install
> Blastwave/OpenSFW or build things themselves just to get
> basic common software. That's just insane :)
> > 

Alasdair,

The original question asked if Blastwave maintained certain packages.

The Blastwave packaging solution is not OpenSolaris specific or oriented/based on that revised OS platform so will have faults based on legacy support concepts and upward compatibility concerns. Blastwave is primarily only supportive of the 'OFFICIAL' production-quality stable releases of the Solaris OS mainline (originally having a native package management solution based on the Solaris 8 OS consolidation). Hence, the 'bloatware' conception dealt with in /opt(/csw) based on Solaris 8 OS  deficiencies.

The standpoint of your angle of conversation is biased on packaging solutions based on what is included in an OpenSolaris 'core' (or modern Solaris OS) release. Blastwave is mainly based on software development and availability solutions relating to Solaris 8 and above - not from the Solaris 10 nor OpenSolaris in whole. In understanding this, you cannot fairly compare in concept what Blastwave does in supporting multiple releases of 'Solaris' from the Solaris 8/9/10/11 concepts versus packaging solutions based on a specific snapshots of OpenSolaris.

I like your idealogy on people (basic users) not having to build their own software for basic software needs - but realistically this is from a 'sys admin' related point of view as well. In most cases, if we look at this from a server OS perspective they don't have to (i.e. in the short term at least). In other cases, you have to get the ISV/IHV to support your OS distribution or the core OS distro you've based your distro on - as well as have the 'human' resources to properly maintain and update the software packages. Even an autobuilder needs humans to 'feed' and tweak its' I/O properly....

This I've said moreso for clarity on a subject matter than in debatable rhetoric.

~ Ken Mays