Re: Installer.app feedback

[Peter Cooper]

Hi Frederico

> I have began to write an installer application (hereafter Installer or 
> Installer.app). I have some ideas but I need some feedback on some things.
 
Good name ;)

> I would greatly appreciate comments, suggestions and general advices 
> regarding this. I am asking this before actually showing any code because 
> this sort of things could change the way the app is designed.

I like the idea of multiple, pluggable, backends. It would be nice to have
a good way of looking at native packages from GNUstep. Manipulating them
is more worrying, considering the diversity of packaging systems (binary
and source, good dependency-checking versus none, different ways of breaking
a "package" up on different systems, etc etc). This may be a very hard problem.

My requirement for an installer application in GNUstep is perhaps a
bit more mundane: it would be nice, on a basic host platform, for the
end-user to be able to download a source or binary "installation package"
for a GNUstep component (app, tool, framework, bundle etc), double-click
on it and have it unpacked/built in the right places.

You should also be able to remove one of these "installed packages" which
only contain GNUstep components, from the app GUI. Options to remove only
the code components, code + data components, code + data + configuration
components should be possible (ie most of the time you don't want to 
zero the defaults or support files, but it should be easy if necessary).

This user-oriented installer application might never mess with anything
outside GNUstep, which might make the scope and potential problems much
more manageable.

Regards

Peter