Le mardi 08 mars 2005 Ã 11:55 +1300, Ian Laurenson a Ãcrit : > We seem to be at cross purposes. I am trying to bounce ideas to find a > workable solution but it would appear that my tone is too > confrontational. Ok, maybe I reacted a bit quickly too. If you really want good Linux support (and not treat it like windows and wonder when users start complaining) you need to provide a repository of linux packages (basically just a ftp/http server with native packages and a few index files that help Linux autodownloaders know what you provide). The hard part is though now all Linux distribution packages have more or less the same properties they don't all use the same on-disk format. So you will probably need relays for every single Linux distribution you care about (ok realistically a rpm release + a deb release + a tar.gz release should cover almost everyone). So for example you'll need a contact in Fedora Extras or rpmforge, another in PLF, another in Debian. Now the nice part is since all the Linux packaging systems are very close from a functional POW they all more or less have the same needs : - very strict version numbering - releases in tar.bz2 with strict naming and internal layout - installation must be possible in a fully automated way (no human intervention at all, for example from a cron) and avoid changing common files (a Linux package "owns" files, they are checksummed and digitally signed. If a package tries to modify a file owned by another package things can get ugly fast) The last point is where common auto-downloaders fail : they either fail to work without human supervision (mozilla, firefox) or try to modify files already owned by other parts of the system (CPAN, (x)emacs, maven...) This might seems mightily restrictive (and it is) but the end result is when one file on the system has a problem you know what package owns it and fixing this package is sufficient to heal the system. This is why Fedora Core for example can afford its fast releases - if it had to do an audit of all the files interactions each time like under Windows seamless upgrades would not be possible. Regards, -- Nicolas Mailhot
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