Re: Would Any Developers Use This?
Re: Would Any Developers Use This?
- Subject: Re: Would Any Developers Use This?
- From: Bill Bumgarner <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 09 Sep 2001 14:26:00 -0400
Not only would people use it, something close to it has already been done!
It just needs a nice UI.
http://fink.sourceforge.net/
I have moved to managing all of /usr/local/ with Fink-- overall, it is
less effort for me to submit the occasional package description to fink
that it is to maintain my own custom /usr/local/ tree. Fink rocks.
In a nutshell, Fink uses a combination of the debian package maanger
[awesome stuff], some custom software, and a bunch of package descriptions
such that you can use it to install/manage/update/remove various open
source software.
For example, to install Gimp, I merely do...
fink install gimp
... and fink takes care of downloading *all* the source-- including any
prerequisite libraries and packages that gimp may depend on, building
everything, packaing it into debian packages, and installing the packages.
If a new version of the Gimp (or any other package) ships, I simply issue.
..
fink update-all
...and fink downloads all the updated packages, builds them and upgrades
the installed versions.
One of the TODO items is to add a decent GUI to the project. While it is
more for managing a *system*'s worth of applications, it could easily act
as the foundation for something more along the lines of managing a set of
OSX applications in a more commercial or user-friendly fashion.
In any case, Fink is very, very cool. If you have *any* bits of Open
Source that you have downloaded and built yourself, I encourage you to
look at Fink. If you have installed X windows, have a look at Fink (it
can easily download and install a complete working GNOME environment--
normally not trivial).
b.bum
On Sunday, September 9, 2001, at 01:44 PM, email@hidden.
com wrote:
From: Matthew Cox <email@hidden>
I was thinking about how nice it is to update apple software using
Software Update, and I was thinking about implementing a similar system.
Other developers would put a plugin or something into the Up2Date
folder, and this would contain the URL to an XML file, which would allow
the program to check to see if the latest software is new than the
user's version. Then, it would download from the address in the XML file.
This would be 100% open source, free of charge, probably distributed
under the GPL. While the system would be free, any software using it for
update services could be commercial or closed-source.
Just wondering if anyone would use this in their software.
b.bum
I ride tandem with the random....
.... things don't happen the way I planned them.