

Gobolinux - the filesystem is the package manager - yummyfajitas
http://www.gobolinux.org/

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koenigdavidmj
NixOS ( <http://nixos.org/nixos/> ) is quite similar on the face of it, except
that it does not make all the symlinks. Its package definition language is
purely functional, too!

Gobo looks a bit unmaintained, too :(

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speek
I like the idea of gobo (I used it for a little while) but the packages they
had available just weren't doing it for me. I'm an arch guy, now :-)

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nathanielksmith
Though I really like the concept, I'm concerned by package availability (or a
lack thereof). It's frustrating to have to take a big detour when developing
to circumvent my linux's preferred way of package installation in order to get
some newer version of a library.

On the other hand, I've almost just as many headaches with outdated libraries
in the current Ubuntu repo (like anything Ruby, which is all for 1.9.1 and
older, iirc).

I went with Arch for a while, but missed a lot of the conveniences of Ubuntu.
I stick with Ubuntu since of all the distros I've used in 5 years of using
Linux, it's given me the least friction when I just want to get stuff done.

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junkbit
I use PPAs (personal package archives) in Ubuntu to have a semi-rolling
release. My browser, compiler and other select applications are updated daily
but the underlying system is stable.

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nimrody
Homebrew on OS X uses the same approach to install packages. It works as long
as the installed software doesn't have to modify system files (/etc).

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ot
The idea of having packages installed in different directories is very
convenient for development, you often need to install several versions of the
same package and don't want to clutter /usr/local (or don't have root
permissions)

Some months ago I have written a small tool that automates installing apps in
separate directories and then symlink them to a directory in the path. It also
supports disabling/reenabling/removing single packages (by removing the
symlinks) and has a PIP fork to simplify installation of Python packages (also
an "autobuild" for standard configure/make build systems)

It was written for development but actually it became my preferred system to
install packages in Mac OSX, packaging systems (fink, macports...) are
_terrible_ there.

It's on pypi and doesn't require any installation, if you want to give it a
try: <http://pypi.python.org/pypi/bpt/>

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eeperson
Doesn't this do roughly the same thing as the Debian alternative system?

EDIT: I should have read your link first. It appears that your system allows
for greater isolation and the ability to relocate different versions.

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ot
Yes, and also everything is contained in a single user directory, a "box". You
can have multiple independent boxes.

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theBobMcCormick
Is this similar to Gnu Stow? Or does it do something significantly different?

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ot
Stow installs packages in /usr/local, bpt in a directory specified by the user
(for example under the home directory) BPT uses the pair (name, version) as
install directory, so it is possible to install several versions of the same
package and switch between them.

The "boxes" (directories with packages) created with bpt are relocatable, so
it is possible to prepare a box with all the applications and their
dependencies and deploy it without needing root privileges.

It has first class support for python packages (through PIP) and "autobuild",
which is similar to checkinstall. I couldn't find these features anywhere
else.

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endgame
> Stow installs packages in /usr/local

No, it doesn't. I've used stow heaps of times in my home directories on
various university machines. The common case is for managing /usr/local, but
you can ./configure --prefix=$HOME && make && make install
prefix=$HOME/stow/foo-3.14 && cd $HOME/stow && stow foo-3.14 without trouble.

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T_S_
I'm using Arch now for two reasons. It is surprisingly easy to install and
maintain. The documentation and wiki are the real reason behind this. I guess
that's the surprise: docs beat guis, at least in linux distros.

Also I can keep a bleeding edge system up to date with out much trouble. I
never could figure out how to do this with unbuntu.

I guess there is also a third reason. Arch seems to keep up with haskell
developments very well.

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VMG
I use Arch too, but I really don't get what this has to with GoboLinux...

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T_S_
No argument. I made the comment for the benefit of distro shoppers. They won't
see it as off-topic even if it is.

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VMG
I understand. I just fear that Arch users become another group of overzealous
fanbois.

I have already seen the joke "How do you recognize an Arch Linux user? He will
tell you" floating around on the web...

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T_S_
I consider myself to be an underzealot. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who
doesn't already know how to get in and out of nano or vi.

My main motivation came from noticing the extensive support for haskell
packages. I would have been happy to use a debian-based distro, but haskell
seems to be too bleeding edge for distros like ubuntu to keep up.

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albertzeyer
Reminds me a lot on NeXT and MacOSX. And I like it.

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holychiz
it's a neat idea but why use Gobo instead of other distros? The intro page
doesn't really explain its advantages and benefits.

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yummyfajitas
<http://www.gobolinux.org/index.php?page=at_a_glance>

The key point is that a package is stored entirely under /Programs/packagename
- bash is stored under /Programs/Bash/3.0, and /bin/bash is just a symlink to
/Programs/Bash/3.0/bin/bash.

When you want to uninstall bash, just use rm -rf /Programs/Bash/3.0.

They also have some tools which allow you to cleanly install programs _from
source_ in this manner, i.e. programs that are not included in the Gobolinux
distribution. So regardless of whether Gobo packaged it, all programs are
under package management (unlike yum/apt-get/etc).

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wwortiz
Well apt has tools that help you install it through dpkg and manage it through
apt, just not many use it.

What I am wondering is how they solve the dependency problem, like say
something depends on bash and you remove bash with rm do you get any warnings
or help or just a broken system? (This is more for when it is part of gobo and
not installed from source).

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maw
Removing bash using rm would probably be a bad idea.

Although I think using the filesystem for this purpose is a good idea -- you
get parallel-installed versions for free, and it's more reliable and
transparent than what you get from rpm -- you're right that just deleting
stuff willy nilly won't work. You still need to manage dependencies, and
dependency graphs are not easy for humans to keep in our heads.

