What next?

[Jeff Spaleta]

On 6/1/05, Mike Hearn <mike at navi.cx> wrote:
>  - Packages are contained entirely within a relocatable directory,
>    which has a magic marker so the finder treats it as a file
> 
>  - Packages have no dependencies outside the operating system. They
>    can embed libraries within themselves easily.

Yep its always fun having 23 different versions of gtk installed, one
for each gtk based app you want to run.  All with a different patch
level... with no clear way to update any of them.

>  - There is no auto update system. Apple also provide a traditional
>    Installer service, which some things use.

a lack of update notification.  Oh yeah.. thats absolutely wonderful. 
Let's take for example
something based on gaim... you know something like... http://www.adiumx.com
Now gaim is actively development and like all networked software its
going to have issues....  http://gaim.sourceforge.net/security/

Users of adiumx, who rely on mac osx's installer have no way of
knowing that a new adiumx which incorporates a new libgaim to fix
vulnerabilities is available unless they proactively watch for it. 
Extrapolate that out to 'all' applications including network facing
services.. and that's a horrible position place users in.  I don't
think the complete lack of an update mechanism is an equitable
trade-off at all.

> - Nearly every app is packaged in this way. Mac users never have to
>   compile from source or wait while an app [update] is packaged.

So no one uses fink anymore to get applications?  I guess i should go
tell them to close the project down.


-jef"i think its time for someone to build their own distro using the
packaging paradigm they like the best"spaleta