[Mono-dev] Idea: UAC

[Miguel de Icaza]

Hey,

> Had this idea on the toilet just now: Universal Assembly Cache. When
> an assembly references a strongly-named assembly which is not in the
> GAC, Mono looks to the UAC: an online repo of strongly-named (and
> FLOSS) assemblies. Several repos could be queried: distro-specific deb
> or yum servers, Mono-provided servers, vendor-provided servers with
> proprietary assemblies. The user is prompted to download the required
> assemblies and once they've been installed in the local GAC, the
> dependant application proceeds to launch. Just an idea. Thoughts?

The idea is good, but maybe this should be done more statically, than
dynamically.    Have a command line tool that can satisfy dependencies.

But if you are going to satisfy dependencies, maybe you need to install
more than just the DLL (artwork, configuration).   Something along the
lines of Perl's CPAN and Ruby Gems.

Lluis looked at doing something like this at the previous Hack Week, and
I believe he came to the conclusion that it was best to reuse some piece
of open source software.   But I do not remember what the end results
was.

Miguel.