[Lazarus] Installer recommendations

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

Henry Vermaak wrote:
> On 1 August 2011 10:24, Mark Morgan Lloyd
> <markMLl.lazarus at telemetry.co.uk> wrote:
>> I wonder if I could phrase the OP's question in a slightly different way.
>>
>> Allowing that Linux and other unix-style OSes have package formats of
>> various kinds, and allowing that an MSI file is just another implementation
>> of the same sort of thing, is there a "meta installer" that can at the very
>> least be used to build dependency lists etc.?
> 
> I guess so, but as you say, it probably would only be a skeleton.
> Which I think is fine.  Things like driver installs are totally
> different, even between linux distros.  There are installers that
> bypass the os specific installing mechanisms (e.g. just copy files).
> I think this is a supremely bad idea.  The various package managers
> have saved me lots of hassle over the years.

The thing that seems really painful to me is that a program which (say) 
uses database facilities would have to have a way of asking the target 
OS's package system for the name of the package that contained the 
appropriate libraries. This probably implies talking to a repository 
server, and also implies a build-time decision as to what versions of 
each distro it is to be qualified for.

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]