Re: Update on distro bootstrapping with Guix

[Richard Stallman]

Please forgive me for taking so long to get back to you.
My email load was heavier for the past few months than it was before.

    >     > I suggest that, for shared libraries, the hash should disregard the
    >     > library's current version, and consider only the interface version.
    >     > That way, replacement of the shared library won't require any change
    >     > in the installed executable.
    >
    >     I understand the motivation, but that would actually be contrary to 
the
    >     initial design goals, which enable the nifty features mentioned 
earlier.
    >
    > I see what you mean -- but this is a high price to pay for those
    > benefits.

    The bandwidth and disk space cost, in practice, is not unreasonable.

That depends on the kind of machine.  On an Yeeloong, which is the speed
of a laptop from 1996 maybe, I think it might be a big pain in the butt.

Can you think of any way to optimize a common simple case with prebuilt
binary packages?

Perhaps there could be a prebuilt binary for package A that
corresponds to a given set of other installed packages.
There could be many prebuilt binaries for package A
to correspond to various different sets of other installed packages.
When you upgrade one of those packages, maybe it would
look for a binary package for A corresponding to the new
set of other installed packages.

In effect, this would be a cache of binaries, used to
optimize installation.  Certain trusted people could be
allowed to feed binaries up to the cache, when they install
a package.  Cached binaries that go unused for a certain period
of time could be deleted.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org  www.gnu.org
Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
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