Re: [Hampshire] Application installers

> Also, particularly on Linux, we often need specific versions of some
> of the host applications.

rpms and debs do that...

> 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.

rpms and debs sort all that out...

> 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.

Well, /opt is not writeable by normal users on any of my boxen. It's
system-wide, so it requires system-wide privilege. /home/$user is the
place for user-installed stuff.

> It is all very Windows-centric. IS even creates an un-installer,

rpms and debs do that...

> 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.

Well, rpms and debs don't do that. If I want to uninstall a component, I
use "rpm -e" or "dpkg -r".

> But at least I have both options, something that using plain tar would
> not give me.

Plain tarballs are usually the method of last resort...

Vic.