AppStream Ideas and Thoughts

[James Rhodes]

On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 1:59 AM, James Antill <james at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> On Fri, 2011-02-18 at 01:41 +1100, James Rhodes wrote:
>> On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 7:05 AM, James Antill <james at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
>> >  This is why 15+ years later "nobody" is using stow, autopackage,
>> > zero-install, etc. and Apple have recently got huge amounts of press for
>> > going from "run .dmg files from a random developers website" (the
>> > perfect developers dream) to "get approved apps. into our central
>> > packaging repo." (far more centralized than even apt).
>> >  Which is also why I generally don't respond, why spend an hour or more
>> > writing an email when I can just wait 5-10 years?
>>
>> I think my point here is that AppTools, unlike autopackage and similar
>> tools, doesn't actually remove the ability to run repositories, in
>> fact it's still encouraged for various reasons which I outlined above.
>>  The main point of AppTools is to *integrate* the centralized
>> repositories with a mechanism that allows people to easily install
>> software from third-parties if they want to.
>
>  zero-install does this too, and even "integrates" with PackageKit so it
> can pull deps. from the "main" package manager ... still has no users,
> and I've yet to speak to a distro. person who thinks it's a good idea.

A zero-install package is an XML document describing where to find a
.tar.gz file.  Unlike AppTools, it's "packages" can not be centrally
stored in a repository system.  I mean, technically someone could
write such a system that uses Zero Install XML files to do such a
task, but he hasn't provided the software out of the box, nor any
method of automatically converting deb / rpm to a Zero Install
package.  That's likely why it hasn't been adopted by *distributions*
(don't say users because most users don't get a choice in the matter).

Regards, James.