<snip> ---------------------------------- PS I like the debian package management system, they have a lot of good ideas, like keeping a list of (package) sources available so possible sources would include : bebits, and boostersignal, and local archive, a cdarchive, a software developer's site. PSS: each package may include list of sources to check (eg a software developer sites etc), so that these source lists are automatically updated. PSSS: packages can be of different formats eg: tgz, bz , BE pkg , zip. so we don't need to standardise on package formats, maybe we have different tools to handle different package formats, including a tool that handles miscellaneous packages (that say don't include install, uninstall, configure scripts) </snip> The problem with that, is that debian's dpkg & apt controls the install very rigidly. I wouldn't was such a strong dependency problem. What if you have a package that is install that will fill a dependency but isn't listed correctly? Then you have to go though all of these command line options. Though, I will give the fact that you can do a 'apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade' to update everything important quite nice. The best thing is being able to remove the configuration files after a uninstall. That's something to have. Having the ability to handle different package types really isn't that hard. Just think of what gcc really is. ---- Travis Smith sage at ieee dot org