[Lazarus] cross-distro (and OS) app installation - what would you like?

Marco van de Voort marcov at stack.nl
Thu Jan 21 11:13:01 CET 2010


On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 01:24:04AM +0200, Graeme Geldenhuys wrote:
> > (it might be wise to check out in how far these named programs are shared
> >  linked)
> 
> True, those mentioned (and ones like ATI and Nvida drivers) tend to be
> more on the commercial side of things. But then again, our company
> products are commercial products. :)

The point that I was trying to make, is that they are cross-distro exactly
because of that (being mostly statically linked).

That's the crucial difference between Linux and windows in that regard.
 
> >  > * The setup must be configurable at runtime. We have a single setup.xml
> >  >   file that controls the setup.
> >
> > (Doesn't this violate single file?)
> 
> No, not from the end-users point of view. After creating the setup,
> one further step is taken using the tool 'makeself'. The setup files
> (setup binaries, data, setup.xml etc) are packaged with makeself into
> a single self-extracting file. This is the file that the end-user will
> download and run. Makeself also has the feature that once unpacked, it
> can run a command - in our case it will fire off the executable of the
> "real" unpacked setup files. Once the command makeself executed is
> done, it even cleans up after itself by removing the unpacked
> temporary files.

Clear. But if it is internal and not user adaptable, all communication must
happen (be possible) via the cmdline.

> > Do you plan to support windowmaker? A lot of packages do this wrong under
> >  Windowmaker.
> 
> If Window Maker supports the LSB or freedesktop.org standards it
> should work. A quick search on Wikipedia says the last stable release
> was in 2005, so it might not support the latest desktop standards.
> I'll make a note and double check for you.

Make it at least pluggable, so that if you need to support some odd ball
desktop, you can at least run a script or binary to install the link.

It is less important that it will be perfect, but more a way to avoid that
that one user that has a deviant opinion or desktop makes your life hell.

(and you can't whine about freedesktop.org to the customer then, it doesn't
matter to him)




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