"Jason Johnson" jason.johnson.081@gmail.com writes:
Aren't universes and Monticello configurations in the same space? If so, do you guys have any interest in just switching to Universes for your package management so we don't have to maintain so many different ways of doing the same thing? The software can stay simpler (and therefor easier to maintain) if each package (e.g. Universes) don't have to support every possible format.
I have always had the same question. With a universes approach, you would set up a package universe that includes the blessed versions of each individual Monticello package. Then you would have a virtual package that depends on all of the individual ones. Installing that virtual package would get you the latest blessed version of each individual package.
In theory it is less general. However, I find micro-managing individual package versions to be too fine-grained. Plus, if your individual packages are actually meaningful on their own, other projects will have their own dependencies on the individual packages, and you really want to avoid the headache of solving jigsaw puzzles like "A 1.2 depends on B version 1.5, but C 1.2 depends on B version 1.4, so maybe I can stick with C 1.1, which depends on..." etc. etc.
Anyway, if upstream authors use MCM's, then either PU needs to support MCM's or one of the universe maintainers needs to post the individual packages. I would lean towards the latter as the first thing to try, but maybe the former is useful as well. It is worth looking into.
-Lex