Auto Package

ACK!! dlist at ubuntuforums.org
Tue Mar 29 21:03:36 CST 2005


Matt Zimmerman Wrote: 
> 
> I would like to see this as well, but the model used on the Windows
> platform
> isn't applicable to open source.  For software which doesn't ship with
> the
> OS itself, users download self-extracting archives, or buy CDs with
> installers on them.  Applications are generally monolithic, and
> software
> from different sources does not interdepend.  Where they do
> interdepend,
> things don't work well: e.g., a game which requires a certain version
> of a
> DLL ships with a copy on its CD-ROM, and replaces the one that you have
> on
> the system, even if an installed program required it.  Where they
> aren't
> self-contained, Windows applications step on each other's toes all the
> time.
> 
> With open source, we're solving problems that proprietary vendors have
> the
> luxury of ignoring for the most part.
> 
> I'm not as familiar with MacOS X, but Apple, I believe, uses a
> packaging
> format not entirely unlike .deb for packaging third-party software, so
> if
> they're meeting your requirements, it's not because of the format that
> they
> use.
> 
> -- 
> - mdz
> 
> -- 
> ubuntu-devel mailing list
> ubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com
> http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel

Easy to install third-party packing formats are applicable to
open-source, in fact more applicable than most people dare to admit.

1.  Many projects already have their own "proprietary"
installers/install methods like OpenOffice or Mozilla or Limewire. 
Also this format could help standardize commercial installers from Real
Player or Acrobat.  Autopackage could easily benefit these companies to
provide a single interface.

2.  There are many projects like gaim and Abiword that update their
software with stable releases rather often.  The version of Abiword
that shipped with Ubuntu had a bug where everytime I highlighted bolded
text inside of a table with an embedded graphic inside of a Word
template the program crashed.  

This prompted me to try out autopackage.  A real need.  

I upgraded to the latest version available from the Abiword folks and
it worked.  I tried Inkscape and the gaim packages more on an
experimental lark than a need and was quite impressed.  

It just worked and mimicked the behavior most users are already
familiar with.

Autopackage is certainly not perfect at this time but it also tries to
provide a nice familiar mothod for installing packages while remaining
distro - independant.

That is a noble goal.  Look at the system tools that Ubuntu uses.  I
like the fact that this distro makes use of available system config
tools instead of using a lot of stuff built only for Ubuntu.  

System configuration and package management are simply two vital and
important to the linux community as a whole to simply leave it totally
up to the distros alone.

But that is imho.


-- 
ACK!!



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