[boost] Where do we get dark magic, evil-looking sacrificial knives and virgins?[1]

From: Andreas Pokorny (andreas.pokorny_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-10-15 04:17:18

Hi, 
Some weeks ago someone metioned that we need a C++ variant of
CPAN or CTAN. The idea is really great. But I have no clue where
we would start. How should that service look like, and work internally?

I think we need some identifcation service for authors, maybe some
access control on the packages stored in the serivce. The client frontend 
will need something to select mirrors, track dependencies to other packages.
An auto build, intstall and test feature would be nice too. 

As Martin Wille just mentioned, something with some of these features 
already exists. Gentoos portage [2], written in python handles,
dependencies, integrates a mirror selector, automatically build installs
and uinstalls packages fetched as source code. The package scripts are 
shared using rsync[3]. The package source files are automatically 
distributed into their mirror system. The only missing thing is the 
author identification and access control part. Gentoo "works" with 
an indirect system, requiring authors to provide scripts, or users to beg 
for packages in their bugzilla system. 

Another interesting system could be provided by monotone[4], a very nice
distributed version control system. We could use monotone to replace 
rsync, in the suggestion above. Monotone provides a secure system to 
get the build scripts anonymously, and allows identifying authors. The 
distributive character of monotone allows very intersting use cases, in 
which authors are able to update and provide new versions of their 
software. 

[1] http://www.cpan.org/misc/cpan-faq.html#How_does_the_CPAN_work
[2] http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/about.xml
[3] http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/
[4] http://venge.net/monotone/

Regards
Andreas Pokorny