All this talk about who should be able to contribute aside, would anyone be willing to consider an alternative, more user-friendly (compared to RPM) packaging method for add-on applications?
The way I picture this is, the core OS (kernel, shell, utilities, drivers etc. + the base desktop system) is still RPM managed and can be updated, if desired or needed, via YaST Online Update. But the add-on applications use a more user friendly, if possible less distribution and distribution version specific packaging. The reason for this is that RPMs can be difficult to install for non technical users, because they have to 1) find the correct RPM for their distro and usually as well for the specific distro version (9.2 packages won't always work on 9.3), 2) attempt to install it, 3) resolve unsatisfied dependancies (goto 1), 4) install dependancies, 5) install package. Now cleverly managed online repositories like Guru's or Packman and tools like apt4rpm alleviate many of these issues, but I wonder if something might not be done to provide more cross-distribution or at least cross-version friendly packaging method. It seems as of late two projects appeared that are worth of notice in this regard: 1. autopackage (www.autopackage.org) 2. klik (klik.atekon.de) Both of these methods shield the end-user from dependancy problem and are therefore friendlier in that way. What is the community's (and SUSE's) take on choosing such or similar methods for packaging of non-core applications in the future? I'm very much looking forward to see how the SUPER KLIK project that Andreas Girardet and the klik maintainer have set up turns out. If it goes well, maybe that's something to consider for SUSE 11? Or 12, seeing as how both autopackage and klik are still in quite early stages and are not yet mature. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
