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

[Havoc Pennington <rhpennin midway uchicago edu>]

On Fri, 4 Sep 1998, David Jeske wrote:
> 
> 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.
> 

I haven't ever seen Marimba; how is this different from packages, except
for the fact that it's all automatic?

For example, I needed g77 the other day; I typed "apt-get install g77" and
the ultra-cool new Debian package manager Apt went online, got the program
and all dependencies, installed and configured it. And I was done.  Then
when it's taking up disk space, I type "dpkg --remove g77." The commands
are a little cryptic, but a simple GUI cures that.

I guess the Debian window manager menu entries could all point to a script
like:

if (the program is installed) 
 run it
else 
 ask the user if they want to install it, then run it

(problem is that right now the menu entries only appear after
 installation, but that could be changed.)

I guess all that's missing then is blowing away the installation if disk
space is needed. But that wouldn't be too hard. 

I see it as a distribution issue; I doubt you could get a dist. to do it
by default, because it would sure annoy most people, but it doesn't seem
too difficult to retrofit. Debian at least encourages distributions based 
on it; seems like it'd be fairly straightforward to create a custom Debian
derivative with this feature.

However I don't think the Gnome project can really do anything with this;
it's got to involve the distributions, because that's where software gets
installed.

Havoc

(let's see how long this email takes to get to the list; seems like a day
or two has been the rule lately... :-)