On Mon, 16 Jun 2003 12:21:21 +0900
Tom Clarke <tom / u2i.com> wrote:

> All that needs to happen is for all packages to adhere to the de-facto
> standards already widely adopted, such that packages are:
> 	a) packaged as tar.gz
> 	b) use either:
> 	-	Minero Aoki's install.rb/setup.rb, or
> 	-	automake/autoconf (./configure; make; make install)

automake/autoconf would be hard to get working on a Windows systems.

> 	c) Have correct download  and version information available in the RAA
> 
> In particular they need to support the --prefix=PATH option, so that
> packages can be installed in non-root locations as required by many of
> the packaging systems.

Now, for the compiled packages, prefix/destdir would be enough for me. In
fact, I would suggest a 'raa' script so you could just do a:

$ raa configure prefix=/usr/local destdir=/tmp/lala-1234
< 'raa' does stuff here >
$ raa build
< 'raa' builds it >
$ su
< enter root password here. :-) >
$ raa install
< install goes here >

< system specific commmands to make a package out of /tmp/lala-1234 go here >

....and we require that all packages on the RAA have a 'raa' script that
supports this interface. Now, 'raa' could be calling some other script behind
our back, we don't care so long as it supports the 'raa' interface.

Here's another idea: If a package meets our 'no compiling needed, all
files are in the right directory' specs, (whatever that turns out to be: I
would suggest a specially named directory in the tarball that can just be
dropped into somewhere in $LOAD_PATH) the raa script in the package
tarball would contain a

require 'install-this-package-without-compiling-because-it-does-not-need-it'

....or something with a slightly less verbose name. :-)

Jason Creighton