[plug] Linux Desktop Market

[William Kenworthy]

I think the problem with the autopackage system is its a solution
without a problem.  In almost all cases, the base packaging system for
both binary and source distros is tar.gz or tar.bz2.  Every package that
I know is available from the upstream source as a tarball, and often in
rpm, debs and so on as well.

All other packaging systems are just layers or wrappers built on top of
this basic system.  rpm's have an embedded tar.gz, as do debs (from
google searches, I have not extracted a .deb)

For instance, emerge has tools that allow the use of rpm's - it
generally extracts the tar file and installs it according to the recipe,
or can use the rpm directly in some cases (manual install).  rpm can
build rpm format files from raw tar.gz's.  i.e., its fairly easy for a
packaging system to strip and interpret the metadata, and then install
natively.

So cross distro packaging is happening now!  autopackage suffers a
further disadvantage in that it is not tied to a distro - until this
happens, there is no real reason to use it, as other tools already
natively cover what its trying to.

BillK




On Wed, 2005-10-26 at 18:21 +0800, Leon Brooks wrote:
> On Wednesday 26 October 2005 14:47, John Knight wrote:
> > But as OSS, we have security through transparency, so we
> > wouldn't have problems to the same extent.