Difference between revisions of "User:Kr/Packaging"
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===Capabilities=== | ===Capabilities=== | ||
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====Product View==== | ====Product View==== | ||
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WSUS Links: | WSUS Links: | ||
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/en-us/sus/default.mspx | http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/en-us/sus/default.mspx | ||
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==Links== | ==Links== | ||
* Autopackage[http://autopackage.org/] | * Autopackage[http://autopackage.org/] | ||
* RPM[http://www.rpm.org] | * RPM[http://www.rpm.org] | ||
Revision as of 15:46, 21 January 2008
Todos:
- Split this into multiple pages.
- Add testing, testability and QA.
- List the stakeholders.
- Add "few deliverables as possible" goal.
- Add 3rd party staff to be separated.
Contents
- 1 Overview
- 2 Requirements
- 3 Wishful Thinking
- 4 Implementations
- 5 Links
Overview
Some clarification is needed regarding the terms to describe how to deploy, update, maintain and configure a particular software program.
Products
A product consists of a particular set of features and localizations targeted to a particular set of platforms and deployment systems. A product is a set of bits provided by a medium such as a CD, a floppy disk or as a download. A product typically has a brand as well as predecessor and successor products and may require other products to be installed. Independent Products assembled of other (sub-) products may share these (sub-) products, even if these (sub-) products are implementation details only.
Deployment
As OOo is cross platform (Operating System / Machine Architecture), OOo installation sets need to integrate with different deployment systems.
These deployment systems can be categorized as to be
- package oriented (such as RPM) and / or
- product oriented (such as MS Windows Installer).
Package Support
Package oriented deployment systems typically lack product support, e.g. in a package oriented deployment system, the user typically only sees the deployed packages in the systems configuration and is neither able to directly see which products are represented by which packages, nor which additional features are available. To remove a particular product the user needs to find and to remove all belonging packages (sometimes even the indirectly installed packages) typically by searching the package database.
Package oriented deployment systems enable sharing of packages between products, allowing for re-usage of particular files or functionalities.
Packages can typically be set into relationship to one another. The following are typical relationships,
- one package may require on one or many another packages,
- one package may conflict with one or many other packages,
- one package may replace one or many other packages,
- one package may suggest one or many other packages.
Program updates may be deployed at least on a package granularity, while some deployment systems even support patch packages (packages which only contain the differences between a particular package and its successor).
Product Support
In a product oriented deployment system, the user sees the installed products in the systems configuration. Customization is typically supported by product, offering not yet installed features as well as allowing to remove the product as a whole.
Product based deployment systems may allow sharing of entities (e.g. files) on some level (e.g. "component", see below).
Product based deployment systems typically allow to set products into predecessor / successor relationship.
Product based deployment systems mostly only support product updates on a product level, e.g. as new products or as product patches, which may only be applied to one particular product.
Updates
Over time, new versions of products are released, providing bug fixes, additional features, usability improvements etc. During the deployment of product updates the older versions may be de-installed or altered respectively completed. Updates may be provided as dedicated products or as implicit downloads.
Requirements
Compatibility
As a product evolves, its interfaces may change in an incompatible fashion. For binary packages mostly interesting are
- ABI (Application Binary Interface) incompatible changes, as well as
- structural incompatible changes (removed / renamed files).
Some installation units try to stay compatible, expressing any change of compatibility in their version numbers, while others may change incompatible with every version.
Version numbers expressing compatibility are typically used as follows,
- a change in the micro version signals for bug fixes only,
- a change in a minor version signals additional features,
- a change in the major signals an incompatible (API / ABI etc.) change.
The OOo productizer needs to support compatibility changes, such that different versions and derivatives may be installed without conflict side by side.
Deployment Systems
Deployment systems to be supported by OOo are at least
- MS Windows Installer,
- Red Hat Package Manager,
- Debian Packages
- Solaris Packages and
- Mac OS X Packages.
Developers
Support for Changes:
- updated package(s)
- (automatically) remove package(s)
- add package(s)
- rename package(s)
- remove file(s)
- add file(s)
- move file(s)
Program Management
In a perfect world, program management would be able to create any kind of product, only depending on business needs, not restricted by technical constraints.
Program Management basically mediates between marketing / market requirements and the pool of available technologies.
Program management requires the following product relationships to be supported:
- No relationship -> self contained
- Update relationship
- update only (e.g. add-ons, localizations)
- self contained (e.g. OOo 2.1 updating OOo 2)
- Multi-update relationship
- Cross version (major / minor / micro)
- Cross language
- Cross brand
- Cross variant
- Cross platform
Wishful Thinking
What we need for OOo is partly already available, partly not. Ideally we would be able to represent OOo as well as derivatives by a Product View on all our target platforms. This Product View would than allow to update, extend and to (partly) de-install it. Getting any needed data from one or multiple media / repositories. This Product View would need to be accessible from inside the product as well as from the platforms standard location (e.g. "Add or Remove Program" on MS Windows), if any.
The "extension manager" (tools/Extension Manager) already offers some update / installation capabilities from inside OOo, restricted to extensions.
Some platforms also provide mechanisms for system update and maintenance, certainly an installed OOo, respectively derivative, needs to integrate with this as well.
Combining these things gets kind of complicated, remembering that parts of OOo may be installed system wide (e.g. "core" components), while others may be installed per user only (e.g. extensions).
Usage Scenarios
Extensions
Extensions are treated as standard Office features and may therefore be added, customized, removed or updated via the Product View.
MS Windows
Access: Product View
The Product View as accessible from "Add or Remove Programs" (update,change,remove) as well as from the "tools" menu entry.
Note: I currently only have seen "change" and "remove" buttons in "Add or Remove Programs". Are other buttons possible?
Product View: Update
- Setup
- Multiple installations of OOo and derivatives
- Action
- User/Administrator opens the Product View and presses updates
- Result
- All shared files of this product and other products are updated. E.g. StarOffice 9, StarSuite 9 and OOo 3.0 would share everything, except the brand. Updating of StarOffice 9 leads to updated StarSuite and OOo as well.
Mixed Installation: System Office / User Extensions
Solaris
Ubuntu Linux
Fedora Linux
Mac OS X
SuSE Linux
Debian Linux
Requirements
So, what actually is needed is
- product independent update, as supported by packages,
- Product View, to customize or complete a particular installation,
- dependency support,
- certainly versioning,
- patch support,
- system/user repository support, to enable product maintenance by standard maintenance actions (e.g. apt-get update; apt-get upgrade),
- system installation, to make the product available for multiple users,
- user installation, to make the product available for single users.
Non of OOos target deployment systems support all of these features / requirements. Some deployment systems provide APIs, hopefully enabling the implementation of missing desired features. Systems not providing a way to realize a particular feature may be left without it.
Product Independent Update
Product independent updates allow to share updates between different products. For example the Uno Runtime Environment (URE) is shared by OOo and its derivatives such as StarOffice and StarSuite. If products can only be updated product by product, than all derivatives have to offer updates for their particular products, even if the update only provides changes e.g. to the underlying Uno Runtime Environment, thus all updates being identical.
The package oriented systems typically treat any package as a product, while still allowing these packages (products) to require each other. Hence, package oriented systems allow product independent updates anyway.
Product View
The product view allows to see the parts of an installed product in their product context. Ideally allowing to customize these parts as well as to install other product parts, either from a medium such as a CD, or from any other repository.
Package oriented systems typically lack a product view, especially making it hard to de-install a particular product as well as to install completing parts.
Dependencies
Dependencies enable composition of products by other products. Required (sub-) products may even be installed and de-installed automatically (cascaded de-installation), satisfying other products dependencies.
Package oriented systems typically support dependencies, while product oriented mostly do not do so.
Versioning
Most concrete products are released over time as different versions of an abstract product. Mostly newer versions replacing older ones.
Versioning is supported by most deployment systems.
Patches
Deployment systems use some level granularity for deploying a products entities. This units are sometimes called packages or components. Patches allow to provide updates on a sub granularity level, e.g. enabling smaller downloads.
Repositories
Some systems use repositories to ease system maintenance and customization. These repositories typically list latest versions of software products, while enabling the user / administrator to easily update or customize the system.
Deployed products certainly need to be maintained in the same way as the underlying system, ideally being listed and available in these repositories.
In case user product installation is supported, a system may provide user installation repositories as well as system repositories.
User/System Installation
Software may be provided as system software, installed by an administrator, or as user dedicated software, installed by user.
Implementations
Example Product creation for by target deployment system.
Capabilities
Please see Package_Formats&Repositories
Product View
All of our package oriented target deployment system lack a Product View. This has been recognized already some while, when we switched to native installers, and lead to the Java Installer, basically offering a Product View similar to MS Windows "Add or Remove Programs" approach.
To establish a Product View, we need to now
- which parts of a particular are already installed, and
- which parts are additionally available.
Repository Support
To integrate into deployment systems using external repositories for updating / maintaining a system, we need to be able to
- add a repository (e.g. repository.openoffice.org) during installation, respectively to
- remove a repository during de-installation.
Debian Packages / APT
DPKG / APT, similar to RPM / YUM or RPM / YaST, delegate responsibilities for managing already installed packages respectively for retrieving updates as well as managing a package pool (the repository) with packages of different sources.
Repository Support
To my knowledge there is no command line tool around, to modify the APT repository list (apt/sources.list) except apt-cdrom, which is used to add and register CDs only. Fortunately there is this "libapt-pkg" library, providing programmatic access to apt and hopefully supporting addition and removal of repositories.
Product View
Having Repository Support for APT would allow us, to leverage APT to achieve download installation as well as maintenance and would ease dependency handling, as this is already covered.
To query for the installed packages of a particular product (e.g. OOo):
~> dpkg -l "openoffice.org-*" | grep "^in" in openoffice.org-core01 <none> (no description available) in openoffice.org-core02 <none> (no description available) in openoffice.org-core03 <none> (no description available) in openoffice.org-core03u <none> (no description available) in openoffice.org-core04 <none> (no description available) in openoffice.org-core04u <none> (no description available) ...
To query for all available packages of a particular product (e.g. OOo):
~> apt-cache dumpavail | grep -i "^package.*openoffice" Package: openoffice.org-filter-so52 Package: openoffice.org-gtk-gnome Package: openoffice.org-help-en Package: openoffice.org-hyphenation-hr ...
To find the files belonging to a particular package, including the Java Installer .xpd files:
~> dpkg -L openoffice.org-writer /. /usr /usr/lib /usr/lib/openoffice /usr/lib/openoffice/program /usr/lib/openoffice/program/libwpft680lx.so /usr/lib/openoffice/program/liblwpft680lx.so /usr/lib/openoffice/program/libmsworks680lx.so /usr/lib/openoffice/program/libswui680lx.so ...
What we don't have yet is the .xpd information for not yet installed (downloaded) features. As a workaround, we could put the xpd description into a packages description, this would be enough information to start the Java Installer (the Product View) for any product.
Red Hat Package Manager / YUM
Product View
Repository Support
Red Hat Package Manager / YaST
Product View
Repository Support
Mac OS X
Links:
Product View
Repository Support
Solaris Packages
Product View
Repository Support
MS Windows Installer Service
Experiments under Windows with WiX (Windows Installer XML) show,
- that any set of products may share any number of files,
- that any one product may update any number of other products (basically leading to a de-installation of these other products), and
- that any product sharing files with other products may update any number of these shared files.
This lets me think, that Windows is as dynamic and flexible as the classic package based platforms, while providing a simpler user interface.
- Merge Modules
- "In order to avoid versioning problems, you should use always merge modules for any component or file that will be shared by multiple applications." [1]
- Product Independent Updates
- To realize product independent updates I basically see two options,
- try to use the Installer API[2] to install/update shared "components" programmatically, or
- split OOo into hierarchical dependent products (e.g. URE, CORE, brands), which are to be installed concurrently (see Concurrent Installations[3]) and may utilize product hiding[4] (e.g. for the CORE) in the "Add and Remove Programs" dialogue.
Product View
Repository Support
MS Windows uses the WSUS (Windows Server Update Services)[5] to keep Windows and MS applications current. With the latest version, so called "Local Publishing" by using the WSUS API becomes possible[6]. This may be an opportunity to enable WSUS to publish OOo updates ...
WSUS Links: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/en-us/sus/default.mspx
