[Leaplist] FSM Essay on Linux Software Installation

[Steve Litt]

On Tuesday 23 June 2009 06:31:37 pm Bruce Metcalf wrote:
> Gang,
>
> Copied below is an essay from this week's "FSM Newsletter" about
[clip]

> I have a dream. A dream of a world where people distribute applications
> as bundled directories, and these bundles work in Ubuntu, Fedora, etc --
> and they _keep on working_ when a new version of the operating system is
> installed. A world where software installation in GNU/Linux is _easy_
> and applications can be swapped by simply copying them onto a memory stick.
>
> I wonder if I will ever see this in GNU/Linux?.
>
> _P.S._
> _Some will say, "if you like the way OS X does things, use OS X". My
> answer to that is, "I like the way OS X does things, it works, it solves
> problems, but let's rather be inspired by it and improve it"_

Not in our lifetime.

First I'd like to say that app-in-tree is not an OS/x thing -- it's much older 
and was very prominent in DOS, before "DLLs". You could copy WordPerfect from 
one computer to another by copying the directory. I have a hunch the reason 
commercial software got away from that was to prevent such copying.

Today I distribute UMENU as a tree. The original VimOutliner was distributed 
as a tree, but when the project got big, the others wanted it to become a Vim 
Plugin, so that's what happened.

See this UMENU documentation written in 1999:

http://www.troubleshooters.cxm/umenu/charter.htm#RespectfulofYourExistingSystem

I can see why runtime libraries need to be in a special place away from the 
apps that use them, but a lot of apps are written in interpreters (Perl, 
Python, Ruby), and there's absolutely no reason those can't be encapsulated 
in their own directories, except that for some reason the vast majority of 
people don't like apps to be contained in dedicated trees.

Whenever I write a new app, it goes in its own directory. Maybe it's because I 
started in RT-11 and DOS, but that just seems natural to me.

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt


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