On Thu, 2003-08-14 at 18:51, Perry Lorier wrote:
It is possible (and indeed a popular thing to do), to take some commercial software and make a package (either deb/rpm/etc) of it and then install that, thus allowing you to use your usual package management stuff to manage the package. Of course this is pretty difficult for Joe Bloggs, but for an enterprise user this is surprisingly effective.
Indeed, however, I doubt that software companies are going to produce it for every platform. This would (in theory) be platform independent. Anyone would be able to add the few scripts required to make it 'compatible' with their system.
This is a regularly quoted idea. For instance: http://www.sunsite.ualberta.ca/Documentation/Gnu/stow-1.3.2/
Will read. Still waiting for it to actually download though.
Personally I'm not a big fan of the idea of installing into one place, as it means I lose all the benefits of the Unix filesystem.
For example: * It's difficult to share content across multiple machines (which may have multiple architectures, eg, a "high scores" across a network of multiple machines. If I share the tree, I get the config files, and binaries and everything.
Good point. What would be the proper way of doing this in the traditional manner? I'm assuming it would be something along the lines of a file in /etc/. As added in my other post, and install/ directory would be added for files that are copied/written to. In theory, I'm guessing you could 'install' from a CD - although that's an non-thought out off the cuff comment. :P
* I can't mount /usr/local readonly to protect against rogue applications/users.
etc.
/usr/local/Applications/Foo/home/.foo/
er, what happens if more than one user logs into this machine, perhaps you mean /usr/local/Applications/Foo/home/$USER/.foo/
Then I have to create ..../home/$USER directories for every user I create, and every time I install an application.
Well, the idea is that the /usr/local/Applications/ directory is read only, (except for when the software is installed/removed of course).
If I share this across multiple machines then I have to make sure users (and uids) are the same across them all.
See other reply to Gavin Denby with the install/ subdirectory, and the home/ subdirectory.
This sounds very NeXTish where if a "directory" had a ".app" extension then the GUI treated it like an entire application. MacOS X has "stolen" this idea with their "bundles".
I will emphasise again that this system is not meant to replace things link apt-get and rpm, but sit alongside them, and provide a common simple platform independent way of installing third party software.
Well, I did get the idea from when I was playing around with the terminal on a Mac. :) Cheers for the thoughts. I'll read that site when it's accessible again - it appears to be down at the moment. Regards Edward