On Wed, Feb 02, 2005 at 09:49:53AM -0500, Joseph A. Caputo wrote: > On Tuesday 01 February 2005 18:17, Brad Templeton wrote: > > On Tue, Feb 01, 2005 at 10:44:09AM -0500, John Johnson wrote: > > > I just don't understand why it (software installation) can't be as > easy as it is on a Mac. On a Mac, in most cases, installing software > consists of dragging the application from the file you downloaded into > the Applications folder. That's it. > > > > > > The Mac gets that (clearly desirable) drag and install at a very > > high price. > > As I understand it, the main "price" that Mac packagers pay for having > drag-and-install is disk usage, because any dependencies that aren't > part of the base system (i.e., Apple-supplied stuff) are bundled into > the package. So, if you had 3 different packages from 3 vendors that > all used, say, libmp3lame, then each package would either statically > link libmp3lame, or bundle a version of the shared library in with the > app (Fink packages aside, since they're not really OS X packages). > Obviously, the cost here is disk space -- potentially 3 copies of a > library on your disk -- but it does give the added benefit of peaceful > coexistence of packages which use different versions of the same > library, totally side-stepping any "dependency hell" whatsoever.
And the downside is more than disk space. What if you discover a bug in libmp3lame, and would like to upgrade that. Can you replace just libmp3lame in your mac package? I guess you'd have to upgrade all your apps that contain the buggy libmp3lame huh? In my mind mac os and windows dodge the issues at hand in their own way, neither succeeding. rpm/apt/yum/deb/etc. try to solve the issue by tracking actual dependencies. It can be painful at times but basically complex software has complex dependancies. However, I look forward to innovations in package management ;) I could say more, but this is totally OT, and I'm biased and I don't use MacOS or Windows much, so I don't even really know what I'm talking about :)
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