i'm not looking for an argument, just bringing out points. i'm a long time sysadmin (read: 9+ years), but i've found myself looking for more and more KISS solutions for everything in my IT life, which has really changed my perspective on DIY. i now run a hardware based stand-alone firewall/nat instead of a low powered linux firewall, i put a wireless ethernet bridge in my living room to hook everything up instead of a linux box as a wireless bridge (which i do have in my home office room, so it's not a matter of not having the savvy, but i definitely see a need for KISS. besides, it's going to be replaced with a hardware based bridge soon anyway) Michael Schwendt said: > On Sun, 25 Apr 2004 11:38:53 -0400 (EDT), duncan brown wrote: > > I do understand you, but that doesn't change my perspective. A "random > package" at an arbitrary site on the Internet may have dependencies on > packages found on the same site or a completely different site. It needs > more for a one-click web-based installation to be successful. ok, going along with this, i completely agree with you. it was a simplified example. maybe what we need is something like a file format or script that'll add the arbitrary site's package list to your gui package installer's ''available and semi-trusted'' (read: won't overwrite any packages or files provided by the base/extras list) and will then have the ability to download and install software from this site and resolve dependencies. while i'm on this track, i think rpms need to be able to be installed by any user, but only into their own home dir and accessable by themselves only. joe's logged into gnome and wants to install cd2ogg, but he doesn't have root access... sure, he could grab the .tar.gz and just put it in ~/bin and add that to his $PATH, but that's what we want to get away from. he should have the ability to have rpm install the script and any dependencies that aren't already resident on the system into his own ~/bin or whatever directory. now, let's say that root installs the cdparanoia package a month after joe installs it into his userspace's rpm database. the root rpm database checks the joe's rpm database (let's say ~/.myrpm.db) to see if anyone else has cdparanoia installed and then either removes the rpm in joe's user space, or (as joe should have the option) leave it alone and let joe keep on using it. > Or with many problems like we have currently when a user downloads a > "random package" (still quoting you here ;) and double-clicks on it in > his browser, e.g. Konqueror, and it attempts at installing the package > with the redhat-install-packages helper tool and fails because of > unsolvable dependencies. but we're not talking about redhat-install-packages. we're talking about some product that's still in the ether that'll remove any reliance on yum/apt/etc that we have right now. i'm talking about using apt because it works for me now, but it's not everything that's needed. synaptic is as good as it gets at the moment and it's a great leap in the right direction, but i think that something better needs to happen that incorporates what i've already said. > Before we attempt at simplifying installation of random packages > manually downloaded from arbitrary locations, Fedora Extras should come > to life and provide a good foundation of extra packages and a web of > mirror sites which is known to yum/up2date/apt _by default_. but it's not about arbitrary websites! it's about the user and programs that they want to use. fedora and extras don't have mono in their repositories, but the user wants to use it. they should be able to just click a link on mono's site and have mono added to their semi-trusted list of places to get software. >> does someone have to deal with command line flags to install winamp or >> yahoo messenger? > > Apples and oranges. In particular if an installer .exe contains enough > DLLs to overwrite system files if need be. It's a usual installation > scenario that Joe User gets a graphical error dialog telling him that > Foo 8.1 is required for the installation to succeed. i don't see how the simplicity of installing a piece of software on windows is an orange to the apple of linux's rpm/deb/etc. and yeah, you get dependencies, but they're so RARE. and they need to be able to be non-existant as far as the user having to do research on where to find it and the correct version for their system. just because windows has a bug^H^H^Hfeature like gui windows notifying you of a dependency, that doesn't mean we need it too. users want to use. they don't care what gets them there, they just want to get there. >> all this can be solved with letting synaptic take command line options >> (transparent to the desktop user) to install a package and resolve the >> dependencies for the person. > > Provided that the package sources are known to the APT-RPM backend. Same > for Yum. i may be wrong, but hasn't there been chatter about the apt and yum repos becomming cross-[?platform?] compatible? -+(duncan brown -+(duncanbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx -+(http://www.linuxadvocate.net () ascii ribbon campaign - against html e-mail /\ - against microsoft attachments Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact. -- George Eliot
