Re: Simplifying package installation.

[Karl Eichwalder <ke gnu franken de>]

Miguel de Icaza <miguel@gnu.org> writes:

|      Now, why is this better?  Because a user only needs to download the
|   Gnumeric.App.tar.gz and put it on its home directory, we could then
|   take care of launching it correctly, with no root involved in the
|   process. 

Just for the record:

    - rpm has had the feature to set an un-privileged "root" dir; Eric
      once told me, he's willing to accept patches to make it work again.
      Unfortunately, I'm not a programmer...

    - regular GNU packages are considered to work with
      --prefix=$HOME/$PACKAGE.  You've only to tell the user to do:

        PATH=$HOME/$PACKAGE/bin:$PATH

      I admit, the GNOME packages are not fool-proofed all the time;
      that's why SuSE Linux fails from time to time: --prefix=/opt/gnome
      lacks general testing ;)

    - Don't be liberal to third parties; they all will deliver _bad_
      packages, believe me!  Try to stick with the GNU way; users are
      avaible to understand it.

-- 
                                             work   :        ke@suse.de
Karl Eichwalder                              private: ke@gnu.franken.de