I agree totally. I was just curious because InstallAnywhere installers
could technically be used on almost any system. The only thing I see as a
major issue is that Netraverse would have to "standardize" on what
filesystems they install to, etc. They already do this for the most part,
but now the installer would be responsible for putting stuff where it has
to go, rather than the user having to do it manually, just because their
distro is 'unsupported'. The Anywhere installer though still has the
ability for user intervention.
--
Austin Gonyou
Systems Architect
Coremetrics, Inc.
Phone: 512-796-9023
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Wed, 4 Apr 2001, Richard Fish wrote:
> On Wed, 4 Apr 2001, Austin Gonyou wrote:
>
> > Couldn't an InstallAnywhere installer be used so that it will work on ANY
> > distribution? or perhaps distribute it as a Shar?
>
> I'll bite.
>
> <rant having nothing to do with W4L>
> As a programmer involved in commercial software development for Linux, I
> can tell you this would be very time consuming and difficult.
>
> First is binary compatibility: while basically all distributions ship
> glibc2.1, there are differences in other libraries (X11, libstdc++,
> PAM, libgmp, gtk/glib/gnome, kde/qt, etc), that can cause
> incompatibilities. Basically, if your application requires anything other
> that ld.so and libc.so, you had better provide it, which of course leads
> to significant bloat.
>
> Second is system integration (installation). Each distribution of linux
> introduces major differences in filesystem layout, inittab setup
> (runlevels), module configuration, etc. For example, on most US
> distributions, runlevel 3 is multi-user network, and runlevel 5 is
> multi-user, network, with X. But in SUSE (German based), these runlevels
> do something completely different (it's been a couple of years, but I
> think 5 was reboot). Obviously, if you want to integate a startup script
> into the system boot sequence, you have to be sure where you want to put
> it, and get the sequence right.
>
> All of this makes things fairly difficult on an ISV (Independent Software
> Vendor). You can only provide out-of-the-box support for a couple of
> major distributions. You try to avoid anything that causes complete
> incompatibilty with your-favorite-distribution-here, and hope that the
> users of the other distributions can figure out the integration issues.
>
> Not that I'm complaining. The Linux culture is obviously one of freedom
> and choice. I see the distribution choices available as a strength of
> Linux, not a weakness. It's just a pain....
> </rant>
>
>
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