On Thu, 22 Nov 2007 15:58:23 +0100, Mildred wrote: > Hi, > > I thought about a system that could help installing third-party > softwares on our free operating systems. The idea is to provide a > standard utility that could be called to tell the system/user that the > application that invoked it has a peticular need for some resource (that > could be a library for example). > > So every ressource would have an unique identifier (why not the URL of > the web site, like XML namespaces). The utility (maybe we could call it > 'require') would then prompt the user to tell him that the resource is > needed and he has to install it. It could also provide a button to > install directly using the distribution package manager. > > So for example if I (a softare) need the png library, I could just call > the require utility this way: > > require http://libpng.org
This is almost exactly how it already works (except that the URI for libpng is actually http://freenet-homepage.de/LinuxCNC/0install/Libpng/ libpng.xml). See: http://0install.net/ > We could also imagine to be able to ask where this resource can be found > in the filesystem with for exampel the call > > require http://libpng.org libfile > > With libfile a value dependant of the resource (here http://libpng.org). > This cann would for example print "/usr/lib/libpng.so". Or (real world example, from FooBillard): <requires interface="http://freenet-homepage.de/LinuxCNC/0install/ Libpng/libpng.xml"> <version min="1.2.8.3"/> <environment insert="" name="LD_LIBRARY_PATH"/> </requires> (setting $LD_LIBRARY_PATH is a lazy option for older applications; programs aware of the system can inject the value directly into the variable they want, e.g. $LIBPNG_DIR) -- Dr Thomas Leonard http://rox.sourceforge.net GPG: 9242 9807 C985 3C07 44A6 8B9A AE07 8280 59A5 3CC1 _______________________________________________ xdg mailing list [email protected] http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xdg
