[pacman-dev] Maelstrom(Pacman in C#) project brief

[Bozhidar Batsov]

Georg Grabler wrote:
> That's a fine point, Gabriel.
> I just thought the same about my servers, by reading your message.
>
> Especially virtual servers it would take enough space then.
>
> Arch isn't a focused desktop distribution. Anyway, the team is working 
> hard to make pacman / alpm better (providing a better interface). In 
> the current state, they work towards to get by default compatible swig 
> bindings (at least the approach seems to be quite clear and clean, 
> following the git), what means you can also build your application 
> upon the alpm binding for C#.
>
> I also think that re-inventing the wheel isn't what should be done, 
> especially not in such a "small" project. Of course, desktop 
> environments and applications also often re-invent features.
>
> What i really appreciate are the features your client seems to have. 
> That's a huge piece of work you've done, and basically what i'd like 
> to see for pacman. GTK/QT interfaces for the original ALPM, for every 
> kind of desktop user.
>
> I've been working some time now on pyalpm to make a compatible client. 
> I just don't get along, since my work still eats me up, and the 
> critsit won't end, as it seems.
>
> Yours,
> Georg
>
> On 7/23/07, *Gabriel C* <nix.or.die at googlemail.com 
> <mailto:nix.or.die at googlemail.com>> wrote:
>
>     Bozhidar Batsov wrote:
>     > VMiklos wrote:
>     >> Hello,
>     >>
>     >> Na Fri, Jul 20, 2007 at 05:40:40PM +0300, Bozhidar Batsov
>     <lordbad at e-card.bg <mailto:lordbad at e-card.bg>> pisal(a):
>     >>
>     >>> Well I have no intention to fork Arch. I strive to make a
>     product 100%
>     >>> compatible with the existing, but I want to offer through it a few
>     >>> things that are missing in pacman and a couple of newer
>     technologies. I
>     >>> don't think that mono is a bad thing just because .NET is a
>     Microsoft
>     >>> product. After all Miguel de Icaza has stated many times that
>     if he had
>     >>> mono 8 years ago there wouldn't be one line of C code in GNOME. I
>     >>> personally consider it to be a much better framework than
>     java. Style
>     >>> and consistency are almost perfect here. Pascal notation for
>     methods,
>     >>> camel for vars, great generics, great datatypes, security...
>     >>>
>     >> let's say you would write this in python or perl, we would have
>     the same
>     >> problem: pacman is a lowlevel tool, it should be fast and have
>     as less
>     >> deps as possible. mono can be a great tool but are you sure
>     it's nice to
>     >> have the whole mono framework in an install cd?
>     >>
>     >> - VMiklos
>     >>
>
>     >>
>     > Not exactly so. For one thing there are many popular programs
>     build with
>     > mono today - beagle, f-spot, tomboy, muine and others so you are
>     likely
>     > having the framework installed anyway. There are talks that soon
>     mono
>     > will be accepted as an official dependency in GNOME.
>
>     All the programs you are talking about are almost broken but is
>     not the point here.
>
>     You think to much about 'installations with an DESKTOP/X' that is.
>
>     *Why* do you think I would install _mono_ ( about 70MB bloat ) on
>     my _servers_ ?
>
>     Just to run an PM ?
>
>
>     Gabriel
>
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>
>
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>   
I don't see how 70MB are so crucial, but everyone has different opinion 
on every subject. I have 370GB HDD on my home PC, and don't imagine that 
there are many PC's left with 5GB drives around so 70MB doesn't seen so 
much. As I previously stated bindings do not reflect the true nature of 
C# and produce fairly ugly code, so I prefer to do stuff natively. On 
the subject of possible memory leaks on behalf of mono, I'd like to say 
that this is not an app that runs 24/7(Maelstrom or Whirlwind). A 
typical session is over for a couple of minutes so there is little 
danger of leaks as they tend to manifest in longer running apps. And of 
course the goal of the project is not to reinvent the wheel, but to 
build a better wheel so out car could run faster and be equiped with 
more features - for example maelstrom has support for package 
categories, something which seems to be ignored in arch - they are 
implemented with filtering regular expressions and are very helpful 
especially for a GUI client. Color support in the terminal is native, no 
patches required, and the conf file is scheduled to be enhanced as well 
with additional options... So these huge 70MB may not go to waste 
completely in the end...