Hi all,
On 16/02/2008, Andy Smith <andy@???> wrote:
> Hi Stephen,
>
> On Sat, Feb 16, 2008 at 03:14:06PM -0000, Stephen Pelc wrote:
> > We're just about to take VFX Forth for Linux to Beta stage.
> > Coming from the Windows world, I'm fed up with the Linux
> > installers! The rpm and deb system is fine for distros and the
> > like, but hopelessly inadequate for third party apps.
The company I work for uses InstallShield.
>
> Why, out of interest?
I am not a great fan of it, but I do understand why the decision was
made. Key points were that IS works on all the hosts we support -
Windows, Solaris and Linux. Some Linux distros use RPM, others DEB,
and there are other less widely used methods too so using the "native"
distribution format just multiplies up the work of the packagers.
IS can also be used for all the service packs and point patches we
make available.
So for us I think the decision was made to cut costs and what we call
the "matrix of pain" - all those different systems need to be tested.
Also, particularly on Linux, we often need specific versions of some
of the host applications. This is a real problem when supporting a
wide number of distributions which may have varying versions of
packages and even some disti-specific patches. We could not just
replace the disti versions with our own because we don't know what
other packages may depend on them. It would turn into a complete
nightmare.
But IS is not without it's problems, talking as someone who regularly
has to install this stuff I find the GUI is a little slow but
installing a package that needs 3 DVDs is always going to be slow (and
that is without the add-on products which are on additional DVDs or
CDs). Fortunately there is a text-mode install too which is better for
unattended installations.
Note that we never install as ROOT, even when a system is to be
installed for multiple users we would expect one user to install in a
shared location (/opt usually) using his/her normal account.
It is all very Windows-centric. IS even creates an un-installer,
though I find that unless I want to uninstall just one component it is
usually easier to just nuke the entire install tree and start again.
But at least I have both options, something that using plain tar would
not give me.
Rich
