Deb Installer for Dapper.

[Michael Vogt]

On Mon, Oct 17, 2005 at 12:31:34AM +0200, Josué Alcalde González wrote:
> El sáb, 15-10-2005 a las 22:36 +0200, Michael Vogt escribió:
[..]
> But, if you are doing the hard job, you could develop a new
> "libapt-deb". Then, it could be use to develop gdebi, a command-line
> program to replace dpkg -i, and even add a new feature to Synaptic.
> This would be great.

Yes, I started to prototype something like this with python-apt and
I'm pretty happy with the result so far. 
 
> If libapt isn't thought to install local packages, perhaps it is not a
> good idea to try to integrate it.

It can probably be done, but my current branch in
apt--local-install--0 is rather intrusive. Having a seperate
commandline app (and library) may be a better option.

[..]
> What do you think about using two programs? 
> deb-viewer as a user program, and deb-installer as a root program.
> I think it would be better and easy to maintain, but it also has some
> problems:
> - Duplicate the work: get the properties of the package in both, viewer
> and installer.

I was considering a user and a root-mode. In user-mode no installs are
possible but preview what additonal dependencies are needed and
properties of the package. In root mode, install of dependencies would
be possible (using python-apt) and install of the deb itself (by
runing dpkg -i). Does that sound ok for you?

> Anyway, I am near to complete a deb-viewer developed in C++ (I must
> learn python).  It will be easy to understand for you, since the
> code is based on synaptic code.  I will send you the code this week
> or perhaps, upload it to cvs.

I'm looking forward to see the code. I hope we can work on this
together to make local installs of deb package robust and easy :) 

You should consider trying python :) It's easy to learn/use and
python-apt speeds up development considerable IMHO. I'm happy to talk
to you on irc or jabber anytime about the project.

Cheers,
 Michael

-- 
Linux is not The Answer. Yes is the answer. Linux is The Question. - Neo