On Tuesday 10 June 2003 1:40 pm, Jonathan Shilling wrote:
Actually, I agree with the thought of using a separate directory for the libraries, but it should only be necessary when the need library cannot be found on the system that you are loading on. You are probably correct in the cause of dll-hell, however if the libraries were more standardized it might help as well. Jonathan
Yes, I know that, but I was referring to installing random application "foo"
which YaST has no idea about. You know, the type that come with their own
propriety installer that does what it wants....
And Richard Bos
This is exactly what the Advanced Package Tool (apt) does. More about apt at http://linux01.gwdg.de/apt4rpm. The gui for apt is synaptic.
Looks cool, like it does a lot of things that I've been doing by hand for too many years. I guess the real issue is that each application typically comes with their own fancy installer, and doesn't take advantage of these capabilities. How do we get them to use the standard tools. I guess there's still an issue with .deb vs. .rpm, etc. Sigh. <rant> We _need_ a standard set of these tools that _all applications_ can depend on existing, no matter what distro you're installing on. Then, the application developer merely ships with a single "package" file set, hands it to an installer that does the work on it, installs what it needs to from the CDs, internet, ether, application packages, etc., in an intelligent way, stores it in some database, I guess, and, well, holds the user's hand along the way, creates links for KDE, etc. While we probably have individual tools that can do this (apt maybe? YAST?), they're not univerally available AFIK, and that's the problem. </rant> -Nick