[PLUG] One app, one directory, no install/uninstall...

[Fred Stluka via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>]

Starting a new thread to avoid hijacking the Gobo Linux thread...

Let's talk about "one app, one directory" and why do we need to
"install" programs at all.

On 5/17/20 2:25 PM, Mail List via plug wrote:
> I've been reading about Gobo Linux and it's very unique file system
> layout.  I find the idea very intriguing. 

On 5/17/20 9:33 PM, Steve Litt via plug wrote:
> I was very excited
> about the prospect of one application, one directory, because I
> remember MS-DOS and how easy it was to walk an application from one
> computer to another just by transferring one directory tree.

On 5/17/20 10:10 PM, brent timothy saner via plug wrote:
> (For those seeking clarification, instead of e.g. putting software
> FooBar's docs in/usr/share/doc and binaries in e.g. /usr/bin/, it puts
> *all*  of them under /Programs/FooBar.)

Yeah, the idea of "one app, one directory" is VERY appealing.
That's pretty much how the Java world works, and DOS and
VMS before them.

Windows is the worst.  Run an EXE to do an install, let it do
whatever it wants to your computer, hope for the best.  When,
you're done, run the uninstall EXE, if there is one, hope it
doesn't break anything by deleting a shared file that another
app needs.  Welcome to "DLL Hell" and registry corruption.
My rule of thumb: never install or uninstall anything on
Windows, unless you're prepared to wipe the disk clean and
start over if something goes wrong.

Unix and Linux are better.  Read the install script to see what
it's going to do, edit out the parts you don't like, run the script.
Hopefully, none of the parts you took out were critical.  To
uninstall, read/edit/run the uninstall script.

VMS, DOS, Mac OS X and Java have it right.  Unzip the files into
a new folder and run the app.  Delete it when you you no longer
need it.  Combine that with updates to env vars like PATH and
MANPATH, and what more do we really need?

The only real need for an install program is to share single
copies of library files and such, right?  Seems like there ought
to be a better way....

Thoughts?

--Fred
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Fred Stluka
Bristle Software, Inc.
http://bristle.com 		#DontBeATrump #SadLittleDonny
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