Easy third-party package installer for debian-based distributions

[Sander van Loon]

As was said, we already have autopackage. Autopackage can be used for
every distro, so there is no need for third party dev's to create rpm's,
deb's or whatever system the distro uses, just one autopackage. It also
automatically resolves dependencies. Instead of creating another
standard (mdeb?) and further fragmenting the Linux market, use
autopackage. There has been discussion about this before -
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=22706 - but the Ubuntu dev's
are conservative.

On Sun, 2005-09-18 at 22:47 +0200, Sami Dalouche wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm crossposting between debian-devel and ubuntu-devel, but maybe some other
> debian-based distributions may be interested as well. Feel free to forward..
> 
> This email is about sharing some thoughts about installing third party packages
> inside on a debian box..
> 
> Let's take, for example, Skype's example. It is not available in
> non-free/universe , but some people may still be interested in downloading it,
> be they linux experts or not. So what happens on a Debian/Ubuntu/MEPIS/whatever
> box ? Average joe downloads the "Debian package" available on skype's website,
> and clicks on it (I believe it is possible to install a deb by double-clicking
> on it, right ?). Then, libqt is not installed, so it complains. End of the
> game, "linux sucks, I can't even install skype on it".
> 
> OK, joe should be taught to use apt-get, etc, but we are in the real world, so
> it is not possible. What about the following scenario :
> 
> - Joe downloads a .mdeb (meta-deb) package on skype's website.
> - Joe double clicks on it, some progress bar appears
> - Few seconds after, skype is installed, great !
> 
> Behind the scenes :
> - a .mdeb is just a script/ deb with post-install script, or whatever that
> allows to add apt-get's skype's sources.
> - Once the sources are installed, and apt-get update done, skype gets installed,
> and apt-get takes care of the dependencies
> - apt-get will take care of upgrading when necessary.
> 
> It could also be envisionned that a .mdeb could be an archive, containing a
> apt-get repository, that is extracted to /var/apt/whatever. This repository
> could contain all the required dependencies (for example, a copy from debian's
> archive) that may or may not be available on some machines, and be used as an
> offline installation. So no more hell to install a software with many depends,
> and no helly static-linking. And if a better version of any depends is already
> avaialble, then it will be used by apt.
> 
> 
> OK, so several questions :
> - What do you think about this system, which would actually be a 1 or 2 hour
> hack, and be potentially very useful at helping people at installing packages ?
> - What would be the hidden / additional requirements that I did not think of ?
> - If such hack was programmed, would Debian/Ubuntu/Others officially endorse
> this way of distributing packages ?
> 
> Regards,
> Sami Dalouche
> 
> 
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