[Leaplist] FSM Essay on Linux Software Installation

[Kevin Korb]

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Yeah, cars were much more simplistic when they had carburetor and
mechanical ignition systems too.  But we aren't going back to that
stupid crap either.

Jim Hartley wrote:
> The real problem, what LIBs and DLLs were invented for, is the amount of
> disk space you end up using without them. You probably have 47 programs
> on your system that do something with JPEGs, but they all use the same
> routines in, say, LIBJPEG or JPEG.DLL. That's a Hell of a lot of copies
> of that JPEG code. Well, maybe not so much now with 500GB disks, but a
> lot of this stuff was done when you were lucky to have a 10MB HDD
> instead of just floppies.
> 
> If you want easily portable software, link it with the "static" option,
> and you'll get one single honking big file ... copy it to a thumb drive,
> or to your friend's computer (perfectly legal on Linux), update it by
> replacing it with a newer honking big file. Multiple versions? Sure,
> just give a different name to each of those honking big files, and call
> the one you want. OK, maybe you need to upgrade that 500GB HDD to a 2TB
> HDD, but what the heck!
> 
> I doubt we're going to change over to this way of doing things now ...
> 
> Jim Hartley
> 
> Steve Litt wrote:
>> 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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	Kevin Korb			Phone:    (407) 252-6853
	Systems Administrator		Internet:
	FutureQuest, Inc.		Kevin at FutureQuest.net  (work)
	Orlando, Florida		kmk at sanitarium.net (personal)
	Web page:			http://www.sanitarium.net/
	PGP public key available on web site.
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