[Mono-devel-list] Re: Potential GAC implementation ideas.

[Michal Moskal]

On Thu, Oct 23, 2003 at 04:04:08PM -0400, Todd Berman wrote:
> Personally I am against that.
> 
> The internals of the GAC shouldn't be something that you as a developer, you
> as a packager, or you as a user should care about. Image we go with one
> format, and then 3 releases later we realize there is a way better way to do
> it, and we change internal formats. That would put your package's assemblies
> in the wind, and cause your application to fail.
> 
> Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't rpm allow for commands to be run on
> install and uninstall?
> 
> If so, then the packages could be inserted into the GAC with a simple
> gacutil.exe /i call. This seems to be a far better way.

The usual solution to this kind of stuff is to have files (DLLs, fonts,
regular .so libraries etc) in some set of directories, and to run some
caching utility that traverses these directories and checks what's new
and what's missing, and recreate its cache. It's the best way for binary
packages (rpm and deb are really good when it comes to file management),
it also isn't bad for caching utilities (they don't have to worry about
files, just to validate they caches). It's also quite friendly to the
users not using sophisticated package managers -- they can simply put
file somewhere, run xx-cache and get everything running.

If you want to take care of managing files your self, then you'll face
several different attempts of working this around by binary packagers. So
you should better make it optional.

-- 
: Michal Moskal :: http://www.kernel.pl/~malekith : GCS {C,UL}++++$ a? !tv
: When in doubt, use brute force. -- Ken Thompson : {E-,w}-- {b++,e}>+++ h