Allowing apps to install packages

[Mike Hearn]

On Tue, 28 Feb 2006 22:36:38 +0000, John Tapsell wrote:
>   For example, in a KDE app we may want to install a certain set of
> files.  What would be useful would be in a distro-independent way to
> say "install japanese_language_pack"   for example.  Then it would be
> up to the distro's to provide some mapping from "install
> japanese_language_pack"  to running their gui package manager, asking
> for root password, and installing it.

Can't be done reliably:

 * You don't know the name of the package. Every distro has different
   naming rules. Attempts at standardising this went nowhere of course.

 * The package may not exist, or may not be up to date, or may have been
   patched so it works differently to how you expect

Right now for languages there isn't much alternative to shipping all of
them and taking the size hit. In autopackage you could install only the
pack that makes sense for the users current locale of course.

thanks -mike