Re: Some things GNOME really needs

[Victor Bogado da Silva Lins <bogadofuture openlink com br>]

Miroslav Silovic wrote:
> 
> 

	Have you read my enture post? I guess not, since in my post I reffered
to the creating of a installation library that would take care of the
hard stuff.

> Because:
> 
>         1) you'd have to run a /huge/ executable as root. Security
> issue waiting to happen.

	I don't think so, every installation even today needs root privileges.
When you do make install you're actualing running a application that
copy every file needed. In fact the library that all the gnome intall
programs would use could have some security checks (like asking before
writing anything into a already existing/nonrelated file) to make
installation procedures even more secure.

> 
>         2) you lose autoupgrading, dependency checking and
> installation monitoring that RPM/.deb gives you.
> 

	In original post I sujested that the library would update this dbs,
this could easily be done by making it modular, so if you use red hat
you would have a rpm-db module installed that would place the apropiate
entries in the rpm database, the same if you have debian or any other
package management that will be invented.

>         3) you end up with a subtly different installation procedure
> for each application.

	I am clueless, my idea is to end with this problem!

> 
>         4) you have deinstalls that should work (in theory) but never
> quite do - bugs in the install wizards may have SEVERE side effects
> and since every intall wizard is rewritten from the scratch (modulo
> library), bugs remain plentyful.

	This I agree in part. In many cases the basic library would do all the
job to uninstall, but you could never be 100% shure in every
application.

> 
> I think dos/windows approach teaches us what should *not* be done.
> 

	I agree that the windows/dos way in many ways the wrong way, but we
could not say that a idea is bad just because dos/windows use it. In my
opinion linux/unix have a big problem in this area that also appears in
windows. The fact that every program share a single dir (in unix
/usr/bin, /usr/lib, /usr/share, in windows c:/windows/ and
c:/windows/system) this turn unistallation a nightmare. RPM (deb I don't
realy know, but I guess it does the same) solves the problem in a good
maner creating a hierarchy of packages, but this is complicated for the
brainless user.

	I think my idea is good and would realy makes thing easier to the end
user. RPMs and Deb files are quite good, but they are not the best of
the worlds. Many times when you try to install something a RPM complains
the you do not have XXX or YYY, shure there is the webfind that searchs
for dependences automagicaly, but my experience is that don't work 100%
of the time.

	And off course there are always the programs that are not yet rpmfied
or debfied, then you have two options config/make/install them and never
getting rid of them or simply wait till a rpm/deb file is available.