Re: Installers..

[Dennis Payne <dulsi@identicalsoftware.com>]

>      I am working on a project allowing installation of source tarballs via
> a gui (similar to kconfigure but different and with more scope).

Personally I consider this somewhat of a flawed project.  Sources are
typically larger than binaries.  I also like everything to be stored in
the appropriate package database so I can find out what program a file
belongs to.  With this system, libraries would need to kept around because
you'd never know if some other program was using them.

What I'd like to see is a patch method for the package systems (rpm and deb
mainly).  The patch file would have the changed files (or partial files)
and would update the entry in the package database.  Loki is a good
example of why such a system is needed.  If they stored things in rpm,
updates would require a full rpm.  They could possibly breakdown the
program into multiple packages but since they have no value independantly
it makes no sense.  Or they could simply leave the rpm database out of
sync.

Dennis Payne
dulsi@identicalsoftware.com