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

[Mattias Gaertner]

On Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:25:58 +0200
Graeme Geldenhuys <graemeg.lists at gmail.com> wrote:

> Juha Manninen wrote:
> >>  * we use recommended *.desktop and *.directory files for menu items
> > 
> > Do you mean there is a standard way for that for all window managers? Ok then, 
> > I didn't know. There are tens of different window managers around.
> 
> Yes, there is a standard. Most (still active in development) like Gnome,
> KDE, XFCE and many other smaller ones support the recommendations from
> freedesktop.org. So slowly but surely things are improving on the Linux
> side for software developers. :)
> 
> 
> >> Does RPM support dependency checks? Last time I used RedHat (years ago) it
> >> did not.
> > 
> > It must have been MANY years ago. I think RPM format has always supported 
> > dependencies but the tools didn't support it well in the past.
> 
> RPM definitely didn't have auto dependency resolution in the last RedHat I
> used, which was 8.0 or 8.1 I think. So yes, that was very long ago. :) I
> still remember what a nightmare that was, trying to figure out what do
> download from where. Same applied to Slackware with it's .tgz files.
> 
> So when I switched to Ubuntu in 2005, .deb files and it's repository system
> was a godsend!

There seems to be a misunderstanding.
Both deb and rpm have package dependency resolution, but neither
downloads them automatically.
You must use tools like apt-get for debs and yum for rpms or even
better: use the GUIs. They work pretty much the same. Both can ravage
your system (although it is seldom the fault of the package system,
but of some packages). Just take a look at the upgrade notes of the
various distributions.

 
> > Now the support is very good, as good or even better than in Debian based
> 
> That is good to know. Maybe I should try a new RedHat (or is it called
> Fedora now) distro in a Virtualbox session to see how things changed.


Mattias