On 18/02/2008, Vic <lug@???> wrote:
> > Also, particularly on Linux, we often need specific versions of some
> > of the host applications.
>
> rpms and debs do that...
I am not a packaging guy so please correct me if I am wrong, but I
thought you could only have one version of a package installed at a
time? If you want multiple versions then all the files need a version
number appended which then means that anything that needs that
specific version also needs to know to append the version number when
it calls/runs it.
For various reasons we may also need more than one version of our own
application installed. Particularly for support.
Anyway, as I mentioned in my original post, we would then have to have
packagers to package in both RPM and DEB format and still need
something like InstallShield for Windows and then something else for
Solaris. And then we would need to test all of these different
installers. So for us, InstallShield saves time and money. It's not
the Linux way, but it works.
>
> > 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.
Agreed, and our default is to install into the user's home area too.
But since our software is rather big (from about 2GBytes for a minimal
install) that is a lot of disk space to use up if there are multiple
users on a single system. So in that case we recommend root create a
directory under /opt which is r/w by normal users (or at least those
in the relevant group) and then have one user do the install.
This actually makes sense even if there is only one user when you
think about backups.
Rich
>
> > 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.
>
>
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