Auto Package

[Dmitriy Kropivnitskiy]

I haven't used autopackage, but after reading their site, I think it
might actually be useful. Some people in this thread though provide very
convincing reasons for not using it. I have a couple of questions that I
think are important to consider:

1. How do you propose handling conflicts between dpkg and autopackage?
For example, gaim is (I think) installed as part of the base install. If
I install new version using autopackage it will confuse the hell out of
dpkg and once dpkg version gets updated it will confuse the hell out of
autopackage. This would not be a problem if both gaim team and ubuntu
team place files in the same locations and apply the same patches, but
for many packages this is not the case. Libraries installed using
autopackage would make this problem much worse, since some base install
programs may spontaneously stop working once a library was replaced
using autopackage and users will blame the distro.

2. It is rather amusing, that during the discussion everyone answers
Mike Hearn's points about frequently updated software and unpackaged
software, but keeps silent about commercial software. A system such as
autopackage would be perfect for installing software which, for legal or
ideological reasons, cannot be included in the main repository. But is
there such software? Is autopackage actually adopted by any commercial
software vendor? On the other hand, are there any plans to provide some
sort of metapackages for installing commercial software in order for it
to be included in dpkg databases.


On Tue, 2005-03-29 at 11:45 +0100, Anders Karlsson wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> Just a quick question about autopackage. Is there any plans on 
> incorporating it into main or multiverse?
> 
> Regards,
>