Hi everybody, it's nice to see this SIG starting work; about a year ago, I proposed something similar in c.l.p and there was little interest and even less willingness to invest time into such a project. And then I didn't have enough time, meaning I never did anything that could be called an implementation. However, I did have a rather clear idea of what I wanted, with a few question marks. Many of the features I had in mind are already listed on Greg's requirements list, so I'll restrict myself to what's missing. The model I wanted to imitate was RPM, which offers three features that are not on the current requirements list: - Version control, i.e. the possibility to update installed packages easily with some sanity checks (no "downgrade" unless explicitly requested) - Dependence checking. This is particularly important for fine-grained packages (i.e. many small interdependent packages that are maintained independently), as it makes sure that everything works well together. - Package installation via FTP/HTTP from a server. That may seem like a minor convenience, but once you realize how many system administrators don't know how to use FTP, it gains importance... And now for the question marks: - Compilation on non-Unix platforms. I couldn't find out whether this is doable at all in an automatic way on all platforms; Windows compilers in particular seem to be oriented towards interactive code development rather than batch-mode compilation. - Dependence checking and configuration for non-Python libraries. For example, finding out whether Tk is installed and how to link with it. Does Perl packaging deal with any of these points, and if yes, how? Konrad. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Konrad Hinsen | E-Mail: hinsen@cnrs-orleans.fr Centre de Biophysique Moleculaire (CNRS) | Tel.: +33-2.38.25.55.69 Rue Charles Sadron | Fax: +33-2.38.63.15.17 45071 Orleans Cedex 2 | Deutsch/Esperanto/English/ France | Nederlands/Francais -------------------------------------------------------------------------------