[openbeos] Re: on SoftwareValet for OBOS
- From: "Erik Jakowatz" <erik@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 22:29:27 -0800
>>Just looking for folks' opinions on the value of the "software
>>installer" for OpenBeOS.
>
>Opinions are free. :-)
And, like certain body parts, everybody has one. (Sorry, Michael,
couldn't resist! ;)
Although I have not ever used it, OmicronSoft's EasyInstall suite looks
fairly spiffy and featureful -- I don't see why this wouldn't be the
solution of choice for most folks that need something more involved than
"unzip it whereever you want". =) And at $29.00, it's a hell of a lot
cheaper than InstallShield is. And OmicronSoft seems like they're in it
for the long haul.
I'm a little hesitant to take this on as part of OpenBeOS -- it
represents a great 3rd party opportunity. Having said that, it occurred
to me that a simple solution (in the way that Poor Man is BeOS's simple
web server solution) would be a binary file containing a
developer-provided shell script to direct the install and a zip archive
with the files to be installed. You could slap a pretty simple GUI on
top of that and make it fairly Grandma-friendly. =) That certainly
wouldn't be what you'd call a full-featured installer, but it might do
as an something in between a plain zip file and truly needing a
professional installation tool because your installation is so complex.
Something else that was being thrown out was the notion of an install
tool that can automagically go to the net to find updates. This is a
cool capability to have, and maybe we could lobby OmicronSoft to add it
to their EasyInstall. For OpenBeOS, however, I think we could probably
get away with a made-for-purpose tool similar to OTUpdater (or whatever
it's called).
Lastly, I'm not very familiar with all the install tools that are
available for BeOS, so I hope my using EasyInstall in my examples will
not offend anybody.
e
Data is not information, and information is not knowledge: knowledge is
not understanding, and understanding is not wisdom.
- Philip Adams
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