Software installation opinions needed

[Ken Manheimer]

I and some other factory automation and robotics systems development
staff here at NIST have just completed a paper about something very
relevant to this software-installation thread.  It's called the depot,
and it's a fairly cohesive approach we developed for sharing software
packages across host platform and organizational boundaries.  We're
going to be presenting the paper at the Usenix LISA (Large
Installation Systems Administration) conference in the middle of
October, but since it seems so germane to this discussion thread i've
obtained permission to make it available to anyone on the net that
might be interested.

It's available via anonymous ftp and mail archive services.  Here's
how to get it.

You can ftp it as 'pub/depot.lisa.ps.Z' from 'durer.cme.nist.gov'.  Be
sure to use ftp's binary mode to get the compressed file.  Then
uncompress your copy and 'lpr' it to a postscript printer or
browser.

If you cannot ftp you can request an email copy by mailing to
"library at cme.nist.gov".  The contents of the message (with no subject
line) should be "send pub/depot.lisa.ps.Z".  The library server will
send a reply as promptly as intervening connections will allow.

As well as delineating an entire approach, i think the paper expresses
some fundamental views i share on many of the issues under discussion
in this thread.  There's a lot i'd like to add but i'm tooo sleepy and
would probably do best to let the paper speak for us.  I hope it's of
some use to you.

BTW, i want to mention that the depot development is not part of nor
does it particularly reflect any of the operating-systems standards
efforts going on here at the NIST.  A few prior postings allude to
"what we do here at NIST" but in fact this is only how some of us do
it here at NIST - the NIST is a large place and the depot framework is
so far used only by a small number of us.  We haven't corresponded
with, eg, the POSIX development folks here about how they might
approach this kind of thing.  The point is that this is *not* an
official standard we're proposing, just an approach we've adopted to
help make our jobs easier...

Cheers,

Ken Manheimer 	(301) 975-3539	National Institute of Standards and Technology
INTERNET: klm at cme.nist.gov	(Formerly National Bureau of Standards)
UUCP: ..!uunet!cme-durer!klm	Rm. A127, Bldg. 220
				Gaithersburg, MD  20899
Factory Automation Systems Division
/Integrated Systems Group, Unix Support Manager

Do you remember life as a child?
When you woke up in the morning,
and the morning smiled?		~~ Taj Mahal