Easy "Add/Remove Porgrams" for non-sudoers with local PREFIX?

[Hugo Heden]

On Dec 24, 2007 2:44 PM, Reinhard Tartler <siretart at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> Carsten Agger <agger at c.dk> writes:
>
> > Like in many packages, you can say
> >
> > ./configure PREFIX=~/bin
> >
> > you'll install the package locally and don't need to be superuser. Are
> > there any plans to integrate this functionality with synaptic/Add-Remove
> > for non-sudoers, or am I missing something?
>
> http://0install.net/ should do exactly what you want.
>
> Note that there are no plans to actively support or promote this in
> ubuntu.
>

There other attempts (if I understand all this correctly?) to solve
the Linux Software Installation Problem (LSIP)[1], of which the
installing-software-as-non-root is part.

o) Glick: http://www.gnome.org/~alexl/glick/ (promising but project is
currently both young and inactive -- pretty much just a little
experiment?)

o) klik: http://klik.atekon.de/ and
http://klik.atekon.de/wiki/index.php/Klik2 (promising and active. They
have a lot of thinking going on regarding the difference between the
"base system" and "applications". However, AFAIK the solution seems to
depend on a central server for software, which I think is a weakness
-- software vendors should be able to bundle and publish the software
themselves -- the most fundamental part of the LSIP)

o) CNR (Click aNd Run): http://cnr.com/

o) And of course, there is getdeb.net, but AFAIK they do not attempt
to solve the installing-software-as-non-root part of the LSIP.

A little off topic: For more on the LSIP, see Ian Murdocks blog post
"Software installation on Linux: Today, it sucks" --
http://ianmurdock.com/?p=388 -- and the rather more hopeful follow-up
on http://ianmurdock.com/?p=391 .


Best regards
Hugo Heden

[1] "LSIP": Ok, ok, I just made that acronym up (to make the point
that I seriously think the concept is worth an acronym -- IMHO this
needs to be worked on in order to fix Bug #1. I've been lurking on
this list for a year, and I am a little concerned that there is so
little talk about this.)