[gobolinux-devel] No BuildLiveCD recipe

[Koen Weddepohl]

Jonatan Liljedahl wrote:
>>> My thought was that one could have a list of /Programs apps and how to
>>> make AppDirs of them, they could be automatically symlinked to /ROX-Apps
>>> too... Perhaps one could use that inotify shellscript tool some dev on
>>> this list created (lucas? don't remember...) to do this automatically
>>> when installing a program in /Programs.
>>>
>>> One problem is that some apps don't install any icon by default, some
>>> has icons in their source-tarball and some doesn't have any icons at
>>> all. One could provide URL's to icons for those...
>>>
>> Something like that would be very nice, yes. How about we create a 
>> repository of Launcher AppDirs? We could patch or wrap InstallPackage 
>> and Compile, so that when installing programs, if a launcher of the same 
>> name is available, it will be downloaded and unzipped to /Apps.
>>
>> We could also have launchers that will run a local copy of the program 
>> if available, and otherwise get it through ZeroInstall.
>>
>> Also, if a program isn't installed and isn't available through 
>> ZeroInstall, the launcher could pop up a dialogue asking whether you'd 
>> like to install it through a package or recipe. If so, it prompts for a 
>> password and runs the InstallPackage or Compile command in an xterm. I 
>> imagine this should be pretty easy to make in PyGTK.
> 
> I think it's better to use the actual /Programs folders for AppDir's
> since a launcher separates the launcher and the actual program...
While I like doing that on my own system, I wouldn't want to build a 
distribution that does it. It creates inconsistensies. ROX AppDirs can 
be moved around and run from anywhere without trouble. If a user were to 
try to move AppDirs in /Programs around, the results might make him (or 
her) quite unhappy, though.

> So, Compile and InstallPackage would be patched to call GoboRoxify or
> something like that, which checks "how to do appdir of program X" and
> does this and symlinks it to /ROX-Apps.
> 
> And regarding package management, if you need the launcher installed to
> get the dialogue of auto-installation, then you could as well had
> installed the real program to start with? (With Compile or
> InstallPackage, or downloaded a real AppDir from the web and unpacked it
> to /ROX-Apps, or with ZeroInstall which would work as a separate thing,
> no need to integrate it I think)
I will once again hammer on consistency. If any program can be 
run/installed through a launcher, this creates a single starting point 
for installing software. The launchers could be provided through a nice 
website, with categories, icons and descriptions. As a new user, I'd 
find it quite confusing that some software needs to be installed through 
a shell command (or Manager), while other software can simply be 
unpacked anywhere.

More experienced users could still install the software through 
Manager/InstallPackage/Compile, which would also add a launcher to /Apps.

Cheers,

Koen