"DaB." <WP(a)daniel.baur4.info> wrote:
[...]
> I believe we had
> several issues already in the past when the installed soft-
> ware differed between the Solaris servers. Which brings me
> to: Does anyone know an established format a) in which pro-
> jects could write down their requirements and b) that covers
> both Debian and Solaris? So when admins need to (re-)in-
> stall a server, they wouldn't have to guess which packages
> are (still) required, but could just collect all
> $HOME/.requirements for active accounts and when one of
> these could not be satisfied, there would also be a person
> to contact before tools get broken.
That is a nice plan, but it would not work, because
most users are not capable
to tell what liberies they need. And it is BTW not a problem to have a libery
installed that is not used (because we have enough free space for that).
[...]
It's not only a question of space, but also of availability.
I don't know about Debian or Solaris, but on Fedora some
packages are sent to a farm up north when they don't compile
in the current release and noone volunteers to fix it. I
wouldn't want the admins in this case to work on such prob-
lems if there is no existing demand.
I'm more optimistic regarding the abilities of the tool-
server users - if someone can write "import x" or "use y;"
they should be able to copy and paste that to another file.
And if they don't, that'd be a nice opportunity to ask for
and share some knowledge.
Tim