Ubuntu Developing Its Own Package Format, Installer

An anonymous reader writes "While complementing Debian APT/DPKG, Canonical is now developing their own package format. The new package format has promised highlights of having no dependencies between applications, each package would install to its own directory, root support wouldn't always be required, and overall a more self-contained and easier approach for developers than it stands now for Debian/Ubuntu packages. The primary users of the new packaging system would be those distributing applications built on the Ubuntu Touch/Phone SDK. The initial proof-of-concept package management system is written in Python and uses JSON representation." This quote from the post by Canonical's Colin Watson bears repeating: "We'll continue to use dpkg and apt for building the Ubuntu operating system, syncing with Debian, and so on."

Comments

Re:More Flexibility?

[girlintraining]

Why on earth would I want to cram everything into a central repository?

This is a question that's been asked and answered a great many times, if you care to google it. I won't bother going into all of the benefits over centralization... but the biggest one is concurrently running applications: A change in the registry means the applications that access that key get the new value in real time. A file doesn't necessarily do that; Especially if it's been locked for writing.

Re:More Flexibility?

[girlintraining]

As far as "just works" goes. Nothing that MacOS or WinDOS has can touch a Linux package manager.

SCCM: I push a button. 140,000 machines get updated with the next security patch. I get a nice report showing any failures, and pass this on to my remediation team to follow up on.

Linux: I push a button. Then I push a few more buttons. Then I puzzle over /var/log/debug ... then I recompile the kernel. Then I try deploying the kernel to a few other workstations. Then I find out that some of the modules that I thought weren't needed, were. I recompile the kernel again. Now I deploy the kernel and updated application. About half of the boxes stop booting up. I spend the next few hours paging data centers to reboot them and what special lines to enter into the "boot:" prompt to get it working again. Finally, I get the kernel and application deployed. The application crashes because it expected libc6 instead of libc5. At the end of all of this, I write a custom script to generate a report for me telling me which workstations got installed, which didn't, and if so, how they failed. I write it in Perl, because... Perl. A week later, the application is patched and the phone has stopped ringing from angry users. I open up my inbox... It's another request for a patch. I open my desk drawer, take out the gun, and shoot myself in the head.