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

[Todd Berman]

Somehow, either I'm missing the point of the Global Assembly Cache or
something.

You are suggesting we have a cache of dlls to be cached in the GAC?

To me, that seems like the main purpose is defeated. And that doesn't take
into account different versions of the library with the same name.

In my opinion (both as a mono developer, and as a mono packager, and I am
both), I think that if mono was to have a utility that they say you should
use to place something into the GAC, and I figured out a way around it, and
got burnt by shifting implementations, who am I to blame but myself?

Keep in mind please that the GAC doesn't and wont replace the MONO_PATH and
cwd assembly location methods, it just moves all the .dlls from /usr/lib and
puts them in subdirectories.

--Todd

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mono-devel-list-admin at lists.ximian.com [mailto:mono-devel-list-
> admin at lists.ximian.com] On Behalf Of Michal Moskal
> Sent: October 23, 2003 5:03 PM
> To: mono-devel-list at lists.ximian.com
> Subject: Re: [Mono-devel-list] Re: Potential GAC implementation ideas.
> 
> 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
> _______________________________________________
> Mono-devel-list mailing list
> Mono-devel-list at lists.ximian.com
> http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/mono-devel-list