Re: All in one universal app bundles

On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 8:35 AM, Liam Proven <[email protected]> wrote:
> http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/06/snap-to-be-universal-linux-package-format
>

Hi Liam,

Thanks for sharing the link with us. I have been following the
discussion on LWN.net here:
http://lwn.net/Articles/691309/#Comments

There are several disadvantages and questions with that format. For
instance, should one include e.g., the Python interpreter on every
package that relies on it? What about the GTK+ stack? It looks a lot
like static linking to me, although it is still lightweight when
compared to shipping a whole container.

I've been wanting to implement a small extension to GoboLinux Runner
that would let us achieve something similar but with a lot less
overhead. If you remember, we used to have binary packages back in the
day. InstallPackage would look for the requested program/version on
our repository and then install it. The way Runner (currently
available in our git repo) works is simple: you invoke 'Runner
appname' and it parses appname's Dependencies file under
/Programs/App/Version, creating an overlay under /usr (or
/System/Index) with the versions of libraries and other packages that
App needs.

Now, the small extension I talk about is to enable Runner to download
any missing dependencies on the fly from our package store. The
advantage is that we do not need to download dependencies that are
already installed. Also, we can effectively maintain several different
versions of a given dependency, as playing with the symbolic links
(and potentially overwriting existing symbolic links from other
versions of that dependency) is not necessary; overlaying takes care
of that.

In the end, each time you invoke Runner you have a pseudo-container
that ensures the file system view satisfies the given program's needs.

Let me know if you have any comments on this idea.

Best regards,
Lucas