goodies-management

[Jannis Pohlmann]

Biju Chacko schrieb:
> Benedikt Meurer wrote:
> 
>>Of course, this new installer would offer (optional) integration with
>>the system's package management (Solaris/BSD pkgs, .deb, .rpm). This is
>>on TODO for InstallIt for a very long time now, but it's not really
>>trivial, esp. since the installer is included in every .bin file.
> 
> 
> Personally, I don't think it makes sense to duplicate the functionality 
> of the system package manager. IMO, what are needed are build scripts to 
> generate packages for individual OSes and distros.

It isn't on the top of the TODO list. Anyway, it's a good idea from my
point of view, since it even saves the advanced user time he would
otherwise spend on searching for the right package for his platform (if
it's not yet packed officially).

> 
> These would be primarily targetted at packagers - to make it easy as 
> possible for them to make packages for their OS. They could also be used 
>   by power users to build their own packages.
> 
> However, a GUI-based tool like InstallIt implies that building packages 
> is easy enough that it can be done by end users. However, the reality is 
> that dependency tracking for something as complicated as Xfce is 
> sufficiently nasty that we probably ought to leave to people who 
> specialise in it -- ie packagers.

I do think that the sooner or later, almost every user of Linux or BSD
has to deal with installing packages. Even the kids know how to use
apt-get (maybe via Synaptic), yum or whatever. Maybe we could
distinguish between the distribution-specific naming schemes when
defining the dependencies, e.g. (abstracted):

	<dependencies>
		<os type="redhat">
			<pkg>gtk2-devel</pkg>
		</os>
		<os type="debian">
			<pkg>libgtk2.0-devel</pkg>
		</os>
	</dependencies>

This would provide the user with dependency names fitting his
platform/distribution.

Well, discussing the XML format(s) to use will be hard work. Luckily,
Benedikt already did a good job here once again.

> -- b

Jannis