On Thu, Jan 21, 2016 at 04:57:28PM +0100, Didier Kryn wrote: > Le 21/01/2016 12:33, Hendrik Boom a écrit :
> >So I tried installing it, and found that it recommended zeroinstall-injector. > >Anyone know what this is? It seems to be a "platform-independent > >package manager". What does this mean in relation to rox-filer. And > >how does it relate to apt and aptitude. > > > >Might it alleviate some of the above complaints? > > > I always use apt-get install --no-install-recommends, or > "default upgrade" in Synaptic. And I don't look at the recommended > packages :-) I use aptitude, and of course I use it in the default mode that does not automatically install recommendations, in keeping with Devuan-style minimalism. But it doesn't wtop me from wondering why other packages are recommended, and whether I might find them useful. Back in the Debian days, when I installed asciidoc I ended up with all of docbook and all of Tex's many packages, which I had no use for, since all I needed was to generate HTML (Why asciidooc? because I was working on someone else's project). I'm pleased wth the Devuan defaults. > > This "recommends" feature has become a kind of bin for packages > the maintainers would like desperately to "require" for obscure > reasons, but they fail to find a valid one. > > Didier the reasons are often obscure only because the package descriptions are so telegraphic. Ideally the package manager should be organised to let the developer to explain why each of those packages had been recommended so that the user can decide. In this case I'm getting clue. Zero-install turns out to be a package manager, that apparently works compatibly on Linux, Windows, OS X, Unix, and in case that isn't enough, also as source code. Rox is a desktop. The Rox terminal (recommeded in this thread originally) and the Rox file manager are components of Rox, but as we see they can easily be used independently. I suspect that zeroinstall is the native, cross-platform package installer that Rox uses, and quite possibly that a lot of the file-type handlers for the rox file manager are available as zero-install packages. Stll, I'd like to *know* that instead of just suspecting it. Zeroinstall can apparently allow users to install packages without requiring them to have administrative privileges, can ensure that when the same version of the same package is installed by different users, only one copy occupies disk space, keep track of which users belong with which packages (so they don't get their stuff mixed up) and install multiple different versions of one package in case users have different constraints because of the curse of compatibility. Annd, to my surprise, the current zeroinstall is written in OCaml, a language that's a pretty good tool for writing reliable software. The previous version was apparently written in python. I'm both surprised and pleased to see OCaml to escape from the clutches of logicians and theorem provers into the wider world of system programming. I've always thought that about 90 or more percent of the C code in the world could better be written in OCaml. Perhaps there's now someone else that agrees with me. -- hendrik _______________________________________________ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
