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+[[meta copyright="Copyright © 2008, 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc."]]
+
+[[meta license="""[[toggle id="license" text="GFDL 1.2+"]][[toggleable
+id="license" text="Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
+document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
+any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant
+Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.  A copy of the license
+is included in the section entitled
+[[GNU_Free_Documentation_License|/fdl]]."]]"""]]
+
+[[meta title="Hurdish Package Manager for the GNU System"]]
+
+Most GNU/Linux systems use pretty sophisticated package managers, to ease the
+management of installed software.  These keep track of all installed files, and
+various kinds of other necessary information, in special databases.  On package
+installation, deinstallation, and upgrade, scripts are used that make all kinds
+of modifications to other parts of the system, making sure the packages get
+properly integrated.
+
+This approach creates various problems.  For one, *all* management has to be
+done with the distribution package management tools, or otherwise they would
+loose track of the system state.  This is reinforced by the fact that the state
+information is stored in special databases, that only the special package
+management tools can work with.
+
+Also, as changes to various parts of the system are made on certain events
+(installation/deinstallation/update), managing the various possible state
+transitions becomes very complex and bug-prone.
+
+For the official (Hurd-based) GNU system, a different approach is intended:
+making use of Hurd [[translators|hurd/translator]] -- more specifically their
+ability to present existing data in a different form -- the whole system state
+will be created on the fly, directly from the information provided by the
+individual packages.  The visible system state is always a reflection of the
+sum of packages installed at a certain moment; it doesn't matter how this state
+came about.  There are no global databases of any kind.  (Some things might
+require caching for better performance, but this must happen transparently.)
+
+The core of this approach is formed by [[hurd/translator/stowfs]], which
+creates a traditional unix directory structure from all the files in the
+individual package directories.  But this only handles the lowest level of
+package management.  Additional mechanisms are necessary to handle stuff like
+dependencies on other packages.
+
+The goal of this task is to create these mechanisms.
+
+Possible mentors: Ben Asselstine (bing)
+
+Exercise: Write a translator that observes a directory tree using
+dir_notify_changes(), and presents a file with a log of changes.