Re: Gnome/Linux Application Installer

[David Jeske <jeske home chat net>]

On Thu, Dec 24, 1998 at 12:35:28AM -0500, Ben 'The Con Man' Kahn wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Dec 1998, David Jeske wrote:
> 
> > If you believe otherwise, then explain to me how a package system,
> > with today's hardcoded apps, is going to allow me to:
> >   1) install multiple versions of the same app
> >   2) install an app without having root privileges
> 
> 	To tell you the truth, I don't believe that you *should* be able
> to install applications without having root privs.  Sure, you can install
> some programs in your home directory, but it shouldn't be a standard
> thing.  

That is a policy choice that you may be willing to make for a system
you are administering. However, are you actually proposing that the
standard way of dealing with applications should not be capable of
handling this in a uniform way? The situation we have right now dosn't
handle this well at all (IMO).

> 	I install an application in my home directory...  Test it.  Then
> install it as root into the system.  When I'm just a plain user, I do the
> same thing, but bug the sys-admin to install it.

Sounds like a fine policy for you. On my system, I only install daemon
stuff as root, and I try to keep that to a minimum as well. Everything
else gets installed either private to a user, or under a group. 

> 	As for installing multiple versions of an application, well...
> How do you do that with perl?  Easy!  Just name the program perl4 perl5
> and symbolic link things.  :^)  And you can do the same with directories.
> Slackware worked like that, if I recall, and there is a configuration tool
> that does something similar as well.

I always 'encap' everything, because I also have multiple versions of
the same apps installed, and the whole /usr/local/* system dosn't
handle that at all. The only way to do what you're saying and not
totally frag your install is to compile everything from source and
that stinks. A few isolated programs are friendly about putting their
data-files somewhere that won't collide with other versions
(i.e. emacs), but most are broken.

However, this is not supposed to turn into a 'I don't need it because
I do XYZ' kind of discussion. The system as a whole should be capable
of doing a super-set of the things which are needed in the real
world. Windows right now does a better job of app installation than
UNIX, do we want to keep it that way? We need to stop hard-coding stuff.

-- 
David Jeske (N9LCA) + http://www.chat.net/~jeske/ + jeske@chat.net