--- Michael Kanis <mkanis@xxxxxx> wrote: > Am Dienstag, den 17.02.2009, 10:28 +0100 schrieb > Christian Packmann: > > > No. He uses one of the clicky-clicky installer > generation apps, either commercial or freeware. I > haven't used any so far, but the modern installer > generator seems to be pretty good from what I've > read. > I think you didn't get my point. It doesn't matter, > who wrote the > installer. 3rd party installers are not "good", they > are a hacky > workaround for a problem, the OS should provide a > solution for and does > not. And the package management/repo systems in Unix are a hacky work around to the Unix philosophy of an OS being a huge organic blob of incestuous libraries and and apps. Both have their pluses and minuses. I do agree that the OS (actually, maybe not the OS so much as the development tools for the OS) should provide a standard "easy" means of building GUI or batched install executables/packages/bundles or whatever. > Also, even if there is a package manager or some > other solution provided > by the OS, you can use crappy installers for YOUR > software. Nobody > forces you to do anything for the software you > write. But this is not an > excuse for not providing this solution. > Depends on the system. In the Linux world, where there is no real OS, as everyone defines it elsewhere, you can't and have it work correctly. You end up relying on something that you assumed was in the "OS" distribution. Loki games are one example (at least the couple I had, I chucked them when they got to be too much of a pain since the Windows versions still work fine). The installers run fine but they are still relying on some old library that doesn't exist in the repos any more and you have to go get the source and build it yourself. So, unless you are bundling everything from glibc on up on Linux, a bundled install just won't work. For Haiku, the situation currently doesn't seem nearly as bad. But, my fear is, if you end up with run away dependency problems, it could end up that way over time. > I don't think, there is currently the one solution > to this problem. But > package managers, as on most Linux distributions and > other UNIX-ish > systems are one attempt, self-contained Bundles as > on Mac OS X are > another one. Typical standalone installers as most > software on Windows > uses are the worst attempt man ever made to try to > solve the problem. > Even if many Windows users get used to them, this > makes them neither > user nor developer friendly compared to the > alternatives. > I completely disagree. All methods are very user friendly and suck, just in different ways. For starters, when I run a Windows style install that I have on a CD or from an internet download, I get the same thing every time. I know that my copy of MS Office (or whatever) is not going to change on me each time I install it no matter how much time passes. I also know that, in general, when I install it on the next version of Windows I am not going to get some cryptic error like "Missing dependency libIwasDepricated". As a user, I really don't care how hackey the install method technically is if it feels clean and works consistently AND gives me the version with the features I am expecting (nothing funner than getting a version of software you HATE just because the distro decided that's what they were gonna give you, i.e. KDE4 and friends in Ubuntu). On the other hand, I will give you that going to a screen, browsing through a list of applications, finding one you like and hitting install (assuming that's the version you wanted) can be pretty darn easy and user friendly. Anyway, if Haiku as a system implements most heavily used library functionality in the OS, then we shouldn't see that big of a need for many global libraries and hopefully we can have it both ways. You can have your repositories, and I can have my stand alone install packages.