app-encapsulation and transparent-install (MS is doing it)

[David Jeske <jeske home chat net>]

Hello,

I just wanted to follow up on some ideas I was throwing around here
for stricter encapsulation of application data a while back. The next
logical step, once app data is encapsulated strictly, is doing some
kind of 'transparent-installation'. Something like how Marimba
works(ed) for Java applications. In this model, the OS merely 'caches'
application data, knowing it can get it out there somewhere should it
need it again.

For example, if you launched "Netscape" and it didn't have it on your
machine, it would traverse up a set of application servers to find it,
and pull it down to your machine. If you later needed space for some
other app, and it just absolutly had to, it could remove netscape from
your disk, knowing that it could just regrab the same files off the
network server later.

I didn't expect the KDE or Gnome folks to start doing this anytime
soon, because I had enough trouble convincing powers that be that it
was worth doing strict app encapsulation. (the prevalant method is to
do strict package management, but when the apps are installed, they
are installed into the standard, unstructured, UNIX filesystem
standard)

_However_, the real update is that it looks like Microsoft is doing
exactly what I explained above. 
             
Their system is first intended to make it easier to run games. They
are working with InstallSheild on it. It's actually intended to be for
automatically caching game data from a CD-ROM. They want to more
closely mimic the game console model for running games. If you want to
play a game, you stick the CD-ROM in the drive. The 'game manager'
will automatically cache data from the CD-ROM onto your hard drive as
it's used, and as space allows. If you remove the CD-ROM and play
another game, the original game may remain on your hard drive, or it
may be deleted, depending on how much space you have free on your
drive. Any 'user specific' data such as saved games, etc will be
explicitly stored somewhere else, and left on your machine at all
times.

Thus, the user never knows anything about 'installation'.

They intend that some software, like Tax programs, which are only used
once or twice, would also be perfect candidates for this model. I
don't know how much further MS is planning on taking this idea, but if
they are smart, they will take it all the way. Considering Win98
already has limited forms of 'auto-update' over the internet, I'm
expecting this to spread quickly across MS software.

I feel that _all_ 'applications' (i.e. things that end users use, like
gnome apps) would work better under this model. I believe that as an
application/desktop user environment, Gnome (and KDE) are the right
place to be doing this kind of thing. We should do this from the
start, beat MS to the punch, and further decrease the cost of
ownership of a Linux desktop machine.

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