Re: [XaraXtreme-dev] Installation options

[Alex Bligh <alex@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From what I've seen so far, even if we supply deb and rpm packages that
> know the dependencies, there is no simple way for users to install those
> packages in a way that satisfies any dependencies. On Ubuntu for example,
> I'd expect right-clicking or double clicking on a deb file to present
> an install option. What else am I likely to want to do with a deb file?
> But nothing useful is provided. Even Synaptic doesn't allow
> installation of a deb file that you've already downloaded. And there
> doesn't even seem to be a single command that will do the install job.
> dpkg will install a deb file, but will only complain about dependencies
> rather than do anything about them. And apt-get will auto-install
> dependencies, but won't take a deb file!

Can't you just point synaptic at multiverse and say "Find XaraLX" and
then go from there? (once it's in multiverse)

Or, if you want it even faster, just allow users to specify the
Xara webserver as a repository server - that's just setting up
a directory as far as I know. Then they'll get autoupdates, etc. etc.
This is how WINE works, for instance.

That's how the package system is meant to work. Whilst it's possible
at a command line level to install a package from a single .deb
file, this is not in general the world's best way to do it as
you won't get updates.

> On Fedora it's better because "yum localinstall" seems to do the
> job, though it refuses to install rpm files that aren't signed, without
> first tweaking it's config.

Can't you self-sign them?

> One option I'm considering is providing just a shell script that users
> download from us and run. It would check the system type, then would use
> wget to download either an rpm or deb file as required. Then it would use
> combinations of dpkg, apt-get, yum, rpm, etc. to install the package plus
> dependencies.

Well that would work, but why wouldn't you make it (for instance) add the
repository. Note either way you'll have to get their root password at some
point in order to do apt-get (gksudo will do this in a pretty box). Some
people might be understandably hesitant about this.

> Please let me know your thoughts and any attractive options that I've
> missed. And specifically:-
>
> - Are dpkg and apt-get likely to be present and consistent on all debian
> based distributions?

Yes.

> - What about yum on rpm based systems?

Pass. Not used redhat / rpm since before yum existed.

> - Could we rely on wget being present so we can smart-download the
> appropriate package type for a system from a single script?

wget is not installed by default on some systems (minimal debian install
for instance didn't used to have it, don't know whether it does now).
But the debian tools you can pass a URL to I think, and they will pull
down the stuff themselves. Joachim will be far better placed to answer
all this than me.

Alex