Matt Dillon pointed out that we could have at least a binary packaging system relatively easily, now:

“You know, actually when I think about it, we do not really need to have a fully working packaging system in order to have fully working binary packages.

If we use the /opt idea as a basis, then a binary package is simply a tar of /opt/ directory. The ONLY thing we really need to be able to use such a tar file is a parser for /opt//ENVIRONMENT which builds the symlinks and varsyms.

Installation of the binary package would simply be untar’ing it into /opt and running a utility that parse ENVIRONMENT and builds (or unbuilds) the softlinks/varsyms.

Most packages would have really simple environmental rules, allowing the ENVIRONMENT file to be written manually.

Hmm. The more I think about this, the fewer roadblocks I see to actually making some binary packages available to people. We don’t VFS environments to make basic packages work, we do not need a build subsystem to make binary package tars work if we use the /opt methodology, and we need only construct a minimal parser for /opt//ENVIRONMENT to do the hookups.”