<quote>
A long term goal would be to
develop patterns for developing and delivering the open source
tools/products (i.e. all open source projects follow a similar/same
pattern for installation/uninstall/updates/etc).
</quote>
I think deployment and installation is a very important thing in a
successful open source System i world. The linux open source community
has mastered it with tools like apt, dpkg, rpm, ... . I don't say that
they are perfect, but they work very well and are very easy to use.
As a developer I don't want to fiddle with the details of the
installation of this or that package or with some dependencies to other
software. It should just install and provide the documentation (for
example of the service program and it's exports (procedures, etc...)). I
don't want to fiddle with some xml files with embedded source code and i
don't want to have to change some source code because there is some
build command embedded in it with a parm that I don't want/need on my
system. Usage of third party libraries should be much simpler as it is
atm. The more difficult the steps of using the software are the more
people just won't use it.
I started a query a while ago on a midrange mailing list and the
interest in a packaging tool was almost zero. I don't think that the
idea is not good or does not apply to the System i platform but that
most people are so far away from the "normal/mainstream" software
development/deployment.
There is a forum where a discussion of a packaging/distribution software
has started:
http://www.projex.com/forums/system-i-applications/software-distribution
My 2 cents.
Mihael
midrange.com
