Some things GNOME doesn't really need. :)

[Tim Allen <timallen godzilla zeta org au>]

This "package installer" debate has given me an idea for another totally
pointless installation app for .tar.gz files - a graphical interpreter for
./configure.

So for example, you double click on a .tar.gz, it opens The Configurator.
Configurator scans ./configure (or its data file, I'm not sure how
./configure works exactly) and figures out what switches are appropriate
or useful, and figures out the defaults. (so if you edit the "prefix" text
box, but ignore bindir and libdir and so on, they will automatically hold
$prefix/bin, $prefix/lib - just like configure does, only you can see it
doing it) and checkboxes for all the --enable-foo switches.

Then you hit "go", and it runs each configuration check in the background,
and gives a nice scrolly-list of tests, and a tick or cross in front of
each one. Things with crosses can be double-clicked (or selected and click
on the "info" button on the side or summat like that) and up comes a
dialog with the text of the error message(s) and a possible interpretation
(come on, doesn't the gcc return value tell you *something* about the
cause of failure?)

Potential problems: packages that look like they have autoconf, but just
emulate it.

So anyway, we might not want a universal installer library (and I agree,
RPM is very nice) but we *already* have a very common standard for
tarballs, so why not at least exploit that?