[Clipart] Open Clip Art Library autopackage

[Bryce Harrington]

On Fri, May 20, 2005 at 01:33:19PM -0400, Nathan Eady wrote:
> Open Clip Art Library Feedback Form wrote:
> 
> >However, I wonder if you could provide an autopackage?
> >(http://www.autopackage.org)
> 
> For those of us not familiar with autopackage, perhaps you
> could tell us, what is autopackage, what platforms (if any)
> use it as their primary packaging or installation mechanism,
> and what would be the advantages of using that packaging
> mechanism for a clipart package?

Autopackage is essentially a GUI installer for Linux applications.  If
you've ever installed Windows software downloaded from the Internet, you
will be familiar with the basic concept:  You set the package's
executable bit and then run it; it then displays a GUI screen in your
native windowing system, downloads its dependencies (if any), and gives
a friendly indication of how the installation went.

Autopackage works on pretty much any Linux distro (maybe on other *nix
too?).  It works outside your normal packaging system, which is either a
good thing or a bad thing, depending on your point of view.  ;-)

The advantages of using autopackage for the open clip art library would
be a) it is considered easier for non-technical users to use, b) its
distro independence means that we could provide one package that
installs to any linux system, c) Inkscape also uses autopackage as
one of its packaging formats, and d) Mike Hearn (it's main author) is a
cool guy that's supported Inkscape since early on.

I've not created autopackages myself, but it looks pretty
straightforward; most of the complexities are due to binary
compatibility, which would be a complete non-issue for OCAL.

Bryce