An idea for a new development model

[Alexander E. Patrakov]

Mike Lynch wrote:
> One of the nice things about the Solaris package manager is that *every*
> file installed is registered in a database (just an CSV file so no DB 
> software
> like SQL needed) so it's easy to find out what has been installed.  Package
> removal references the database to remove files.  Furthermore, more than
> one package or more than one instance of the same package can claim
> ownership of a file such that removal of a file will not occur until the 
> last
> package claiming ownership of a file is removed.  During removal, only
> registered files are removed so any user created files remain.  Registered
> directories are only removed if they are empty so if the user adds files
> to a registered directory after installing a package, package removal will
> not delete them because they are not registered and the registered directory
> will then not be removed.  This prevents loss of user generated 
> configuration
> files and the like.

This all is also present in Slackware scripts. They also use this 
feature for upgrades: upgrading means installing the newer package and 
removing the older version after that.

-- 
Alexander E. Patrakov