Re: Comparison: SFX: Autopackage; Zero Install

Hi Thomas

Thanks for taking the time to post to this thread.  My responses are listed
below yours.

What are Autopackage's plans for luau? The last post to the mailing
> list I could find (hard to check as it's full of spam) was this 2006
> post checking whether the project was still active:
>
>
> http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=1167444382.7676.282444165%40webmail.messagingengine.com&forum_name=luau-devel
>
> Has there been any further development?


I know next to nothing about the history or future of Luau, but v1.2.6 of
Autopackage seems to implement it fairly well.  As mentioned in a post I
made to this thread yesterday, some extra code in a skeleton file
temporarily fixed the 'libcurl' problem.

BTW (sorry to hijack the thread ;-), I've been working on getting
> support for Autopackage-style self-installing packages added to Zero
> Install:
>
>  http://0install.net/0export.html
>

I tried out ZI and read about its export feature a few days ago as possible
options, but I don't think the latter is quite mature enough yet.  However,
I want to note that I think ZI has much to offer the subject of package
management.

Not as pretty as Autopackage yet, but it does support multi-platform
> binaries (though in a different way). e.g. the ROX-All package
> contains 32 and 64 bit versions of the ROX applications:
>
>  http://roscidus.com/desktop/ROX-All
>

That could come in handy, as both of my Linux applications are
Python-based.  I believe the v1.4 series of Autopackage will also introduce
64-bit support.

Programs installed this way still check for updates to themselves.
> Menu integration currently requires the distribution zeroinstall
> package to be installed, but perhaps the archive can install that
> itself too in the future.
>
> You can even make an Autopackage-style self-installing package from a
> Zero Install feed of an Autopackage! e.g.
>
> Create the package:
>
> $ 0export stellarium-setup.sh
> http://0install.net/2006/autopackage/Stellarium.xml
>
> Install and run:
>
> $ ./stellarium-setup.sh


I'm guessing that executable packages created by the export feature would
need a decent amount of file-size overhead, whereas v1.2.6 Autopackages only
seem to need about an extra 30 KiB.  I'm not really concerned about
possessing the offline installation capability.

I've just read Jan-Nik's response to this topic.  I agree that it's a good
idea for the AP and ZI people to communicate more or even find a way to
merge the technologies.


Chris