Sunday, January 25, 2009

TP2 Uploaded

Tp2 has been uploaded to Google Code now too. This is a package management system with a unique of fairly unique features that will appeal to environments where package installations need to be carefully managed. The software is written in Perl and one of the strong points is the logging capability - each and every package installation and removal is logged. That facility is also tied to then ability to actual "preview" the operation.

Allowing a preview of a package installation is quite useful; it will only log files that are going to change as part of the installation. Hence if you were upgrading a package consisting of 1,200 files it will only show you those that will be changing - [being added, being removed, or being replaced], not those that are identical.

Many architectures do not allow binary files that are being executed to be removed ... TP2 works around this by renaming such files and deleted them at a later time - usually at the next reboot for example.

For any tool set to be useful I believe that documentation is a must; many people do not have the time or inclination to scan the source code or the Internet looking for nuggets of information. Hence TP2 comes with complete documentation covering installation, administration and generating packages.

TP2 has been used for quite some time and is pretty much complete; it does most things a package management suite should do and then some; for example the concept of "name spaces" for packages is quite unique [or at least certainly not common].

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