Public SourceMage Discussion List

["Sergey A. Lipnevich" <sergey AT optimaltec.com>]

Seth,

LWN article is pure goodness, thanks a lot! I'd like to use this LWN article 
URL
as a reference, so I wanted to add some comments to LWN page that I think are
important. I'd like to add three things, but wanted to check with you and
people here first to make sure it comes from all of us:

1. Dependency system in sorcery is powerful but flexible at the same time; 
it's
integrated with configuration of spells (aka packages) and allows for
mandatory, optional, or configuration-specific dependencies; [a good short
example would be great here, or a page link with an example].

2. We would support an RPM-based or other binary package if the only way to
install it is from RPM, on case by case basis. Support includes integrity
checking of binaries and may also include providing required version of GCC's
runtime. Alternatively, users' spells can be maintained in private grimoires
(aka package collections) for user-specific installations. For example, we
would try to support RPM-based Oracle or WebLogic installation if there's user
interest, and we provide tools to support them in a private grimoire. We
support binary installation of Sun's Java now, provided that a user downloads
the binary themselves. We also support Perforce as an example of package that
needs GCC 3.3 runtime while we're already at 3.4 (in stable and test 
grimoires)
and at 4.0 in development grimoire.

3. For those who like their kernels customized with patches or coming from 
other
kernel developers' source trees, many patches and branches are already 
supported
"out of the box", are presented in a visual interface, and will be carried
forward should the kernel be updated. If there's a GPL patch you need, it
should be easy to include it in our "linux" spell, recently streamlined and
vastly improved by our developer David Brown.

It's long so maybe I should try to shorten the text. Anyway, please let me 
know.
Thanks!

Sergey.