Unified Package Manager/Format

Question

I know that this topic is not a new one, but I thought it might be interesting to bring it up once again.
The reason that I'm suddenly interested in a unified package manager/format, is that I just saw Bryan Lunduke rant about it, and I thought to my self: "Hey, that makes sense!"
Bryan Lunduke is not someone I usually hold in high regard, but I was intrigued and started googling. To my surprise I found that there wasn't much interest in the subject.
Now, to you that may make perfect sence, but to me it's absolutely mindboggling. After all, the only reason I'm still sticking with Arch Linux, is the ABS. Not that I don't care for Arch, I really do, but I spend far to much time configuring it, rather than using it.
So what are the arguments for and against?
The arguments against is easy if you ask me:
PRIDE
Yes I said it: "We're happy with out system and it works damn you!"
So, it works... Well, so does a bike, but quite often you'd probably like to take your car instead. Maybe it's raining, maybe the distance is great. Who cares, the point is that the fact that it works, doesn't mean that it could not potentially work quite a lot better.
Back on topic.
Arguments for, is a bit harder, not least because I'm not as much of an expert on the subject as I'd like to be, but I think they're plentiful.
I would assume that developers would appreciate this.
If a set of tools, like the ABS, was included by default, that would indeed make me happy.
Maintenance of packages for multiple platforms would become quite a lot easier, if not trouble free.
And so on and so forth.
I suspect you will be more than able to help filling out the list.
In the end though, my biggest problem is that people ask for a reason to begin work on such a thing. My counter argument of course it: "Why the hell not?!" Arch Linux already provide the perfect foundation, i.e. pacman and ABS. Of course for cross platform compatibility, some work has to be done, but the greatest problem, I believe, is convincing the community that this is a worth while effort.
Oh well, enough ranting I suppose. I really just wanted to revive this debate, as I personally find it rather important. I don't have all the answers, but I dare you to come up with a problem that I cannot provide a theoretical solution to. To me it all seem so simple, and it's a mystery that this feat has not been achieved many years ago.
Best regards.
NB:
I'm not so arrogant that I do not appreciate that I may be entirely on the wrong track, but please, if that is indeed the case, do try to enlighten me rather than something uncomfortable.

Answer 1

Trilby wrote:
You beat me to that XKCD comic.  It's good for a chuckle, but hopefully that doesn't make anyone think that's all it's good for.  That comic captures the primary (and perhaps only) reason I'd never have any hope in such a cause.
Just look at attempts an universal language.  You'd be hard pressed to find a handful of people in your day to day interactions who ever really learned esperanto, for example (I think I know one, but I haven't seen him in years).  Now we can set standards, though.  The arch linux forums have selected English as our default language - and in a sense we force speakers of other languages to use English ... in a sense, but not in another sense.  There are various arch linux online communities in other languages, where some other language is the default.  So one community can set a standard and try to enforce it, but that can't stop another community from springing up and using something different.
So if we say Arch linux's package format is the one package format to rule them all, fine.  But then we have to convince others.  Even if we convinced a lot of debian and red hat people, for example, we'd probably have to compromise a bit and we'd end up with an arch-pm-deb package.  I'm sure some debian and redhat developers would fork their project or start new distros that continued to use .deb/.rpm, and some archers would conclude that this compromise was just a failure and they'd go on using pkg.tar.gz.  And then we have the exact situation of the XKCD comic.
Sure, the world would be much simpler if one person could make an arbitrary decision based on their own preference and have everyone else in the world follow it.  But that's not our world - and I'm glad it's not.
I'm usually not much for compromises (more on that on another occasion), but in this case I'm all for it, as long as it's sensible compromises. I have no illusions that the Arch way is the perfect way, and in any case, certain changes would need to be make to make it work.
I would suggest that some may misunderstand my intentions. I see no reason my the average Debian, OpenSuse, Mint, *buntu, Fedora, Gentoo (etc.) user should experience any change. A Debian user would still use apt-get install package, or whatever graphical front end he or she desires, as with most other distributions, possibly excluding Gentoo and such.
My interests are limited to the back end system end the tools that are provided by default, like something similar to ABS.
Last edited by zacariaz (2013-08-17 15:09:31)