[FGS] Re: [Freegis-list] Re: [postgis-users] FOSS GIS suite project? (was Mandrake GIS)

[Jean-Denis Giguere]

Daniel Morissette a écrit :
> Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> 
>>
>> Well, I was envisaging a base package and then lots of add ons.  The base
>> package would be "fat" and contain most of the support libraries that
>> might ever be needed.
>>
>> "virtual packages" seems to imply a greater degree of granularity then I
>> was expecting to achieve.
>>
> 
> I'm sorry, I seem to have missed the beginning of this discussion, but I 
> would like to add a few things:
> 
> - As I'm writing this, we (DM Solutions) are trying to come up with a 
> clean way to distribute MapServer and its dependencies. So whatever you 
> do please keep us in the loop, we'll be interested in working with you.
> 
> - We have been experimenting with RPMs until now and it's quite a 
> nightmare to deal with all the dependencies we need without screwing up 
> the target machine. MapServer and most open source GIS packages always 
> want the latest of everything so we would have to package new or patched 
> versions of many libraries and packages (Curl, PHP, even Apache, etc.) 
> already distributed as part of the base OS (by RedHat or others)

If this is a good idea for windows systems which don't come by default 
with the system. I'm not sure that many sysadmin will appreciate to have 
to apache, tho php-lib, ...

On Mandrake and Debian, it could be relatively simple to create package 
repository and apt-get or urpmi can deal with the dependancies.
> 
> - The idea of a "fat" base package may end up being the only viable 
> solution, that's the way the MS4W package works on Windows for instance 
> (http://maptools.org/ms4w/). That's probably what we'll have to do at 
> the end, but I was hoping that we could leverage the package management 
> mechanisms on each OS.
> 
> Could someone elaborate more about "virtual packages"?  Does this come 
> with a formal configuration mechanism, or is this just a word you use to 
> describe the concept of distributing multiple packages together?

The name virtual package come from the fact that the virtual package 
does not install program itself. It calls for installation.

The virtual package can exist only if you have a software for dealing 
with the dependencies. When you ask to your software (like apt-get) to 
install the virtual package, the program check what are needed to 
install the virtual package. (php >= 4.3.3, apache, gdal-cvs-20040618, 
...) If this package aren't on the system, the program download the 
depencies. After this installation, it runs some scripts, copy some 
config file, change permission on file, etc.

The virtual package is a basic tool for custom distributions of debian. 
(And can be use almost any linux distro.)

The problem with windows is that it will need a tool to deal with 
depedencies. I don't know what exists and what doesn't exist on windows.

Jean-Denis
> 
> 
>>
>> I don't think sourceforge is the appropriate place to build the software.
>> They don't like you using too much disk space, or doing much stuff on the
>> main shell accounts.  And access to the compile farms is very ackward
>> as well as having limits on disk space and so forth.
>>
> 
>> So, yes, I agree we need a server to build on that we can issue shell 
>> accounts
>> to a number of participants.  That will be key.  Once we have that we 
>> could
>> start work pretty much right away.
>>
> 
> DM Solutions could offer a box dedicated to that if there is enough 
> interest from serious developers.
> 
> Daniel