On 1 August 2011 10:24, Mark Morgan Lloyd <[email protected]> wrote: > > I wonder if I could phrase the OP's question in a slightly different way. > > Allowing that Linux and other unix-style OSes have package formats of > various kinds, and allowing that an MSI file is just another implementation > of the same sort of thing, is there a "meta installer" that can at the very > least be used to build dependency lists etc.?
I guess so, but as you say, it probably would only be a skeleton. Which I think is fine. Things like driver installs are totally different, even between linux distros. There are installers that bypass the os specific installing mechanisms (e.g. just copy files). I think this is a supremely bad idea. The various package managers have saved me lots of hassle over the years. > Debian and derivatives have a utility called alien that can be used to > convert between package formats, but it seems to me to be unfortunate if a > programmer has to go through a sequence of stages to build a package for > Debian, another for Ubuntu which might have different locations or symlinks > for e.g. database libraries, another for Fedora and then finally something > similar for Windows. I agree, it's a massive pain. Perhaps someone will come up with some clever specification that everyone will adhere to. Most likely not. Henry -- _______________________________________________ Lazarus mailing list [email protected] http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
