[Rpm-maint] Announcment: The Psys Library

[Denis Washington]

Hello,

I would like to announce a project to you which aims to attack the 
problem of cross-distribution, but distribution-integrated, Linux 
software deployment, and might interest you. It is a simple library 
written in C, called the "psys library" ("psys" standing for "package 
management system"). From the README:

"The psys library provides a simple interface to the system package manager
of a Linux system. It allows installation programs to notify the package
manager of the installation, uninstallation and update of third-party
software packages, and to request these packages to be added to or removed
from the system package database. The psys library interface is generic
and not tied to a specific package management system or Linux distribution.

Note that the psys library is only useful for adding and removing software
which complies to the Linux Standard Base (LSB) specifications [1]. Most
notably, it is assumed that the data files of a software package are
installed into /opt as demanded by the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS)
[2], and that a package only depends on the interfaces and behavior
specified by the LSB; any additional dependencies must be contained within
the package itself.

The psys library interface is meant to be a proposal for a future version
of the LSB standard."

Those who remember will notice that this is the same idea as the "Berlin 
Packaging API" proposal discussed on an LSB Packaging Summit as part of 
the LSB face-to-face meeting 2006 in Berlin. The aim was to bridge the 
gap between ISVs on the one hand, many of which have invested in 
cross-platform installers and would like to use those on Linux too 
(instead of having to make  not only one, but mulitple additional 
packages in various formats for Linux deployment), and distributors, 
which would like all software to be centrally managed by their package 
manager of choice. By giving installers a way to communicate with the 
package manager through a simple, LSB-standardized library interface, 
both sides would benefit: ISVs could use their installer frameworks with 
only few changes, and distributors would gain control over software 
installed by such installers, integrating it into their package 
database. There seemed to be a general agreement at that time that this 
would be the right approach to go forward. For more details about what 
was discussed and why, see the two-part blog post on this matter by Ian 
Murdock (who attended the summit) [1].

Unfortunately, nothing really came out of that. No proof-of-concept 
sample implementation was created, leaving the whole concept kind of in 
a vaporware state. In 2008, I attempted to change that with a concrete 
design and implementation which I named the "Burgdorf Packaging API" 
[2]. Unfortunately, it was somewhat over-engineered (using technologies 
such as D-BUS, PolicyKit and XML) and would probably have required a too 
big amount of code changes to installers; and while it spawned some 
discussion (including the thread following my initial announcement on 
the LSB packaging mailing list [3], a blog post by PackageKit creator 
Richard Hughes [4] and a short OSNews article [5]), the outcome was, 
again, nothing.

So now, two years later, I am trying again with the psys library. The 
concept stays the same, but the library is much simpler in design and 
implementation than Burgdorf. It is now just a simple C function 
interface; the complex XML-based metadata format has been replaced by 
programmatic definition of the metadata; and adopting installers to use 
the API should generally be much less work.

The psys library is not just an idea or general design. There is a 
complete implementation, and I have tried my best to document the 
library interface as throroughly as possible. The source code and 
documentation can be found at the project's page on Gitorious [6].

The library implementation is split into a frontend and a backend part. 
The frontend is distribution-independent; it is implemented in the psys 
library source code itself. The backend, on the other hand, is thought 
to be provided by the distribution (or package manager); it does the 
hard work of ensuring that an installation attempted by an installer is 
sane (overwrites no files, does not conflict with installed packages 
etc) and of adding packages "registered" by an installer to the system's 
package database. The core psys library also supports the concept of 
"fallback backends", which can be used if the distribution does not 
support psys. These fallbacks allow the psys library to be used *now*, 
with no distribution-side changes, by linking it into the installer - 
this would allow a smooth transition period until the interface is 
supported by distributions directly. Currently, the psys library comes 
with a fallback backend for RPM-based distributions (tested successfully 
on Fedora 13 and openSUSE 11.2).

I am naturally not writing all this to you without reason. I would like 
to ask you for help.

* While an RPM fallback backend is already written and seems to work, I 
am not particularly fluent with rpmlib, so I might have made some 
mistakes. Would somebody like to have a look at the code in order to 
make sure it is reasonably correct? I do not want the backend to screw 
up any RPM database, so I would be thankful about some additional eyeballs.

* I would like to know what you think about the psys library and the 
concept behind it in general. Could you imagine supporting such an 
interface in RPM? Or do you think the idea is fundamentally flawed, and 
that RPM should not support cross-distro installers in this way?

I am very interested in your feedback and hope you can help me to make 
the vision of easy cross-distribution software deployment on Linux a 
reality.

Best regards,
Denis Washington

P.S.: I sent a very similar message to the Debian's dpkg mailing list, too.

History:
[1] 
http://ianmurdock.com/linux/software-installation-on-linux-today-it-sucks-part-1/
[2] http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/Burgdorf_Packaging_API
[3] 
https://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/packaging/2008-June/000732.html
[4] http://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2008/06/24/lsb-package-api/
[5] http://www.osnews.com/story/19901

Psys Library:
[6] http://gitorious.org/libpsys


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