Re: Simplifying package installation.

[Nat Friedman <nat nat org>]

Miguel de Icaza <miguel@gnu.org> wrote:
>    A shell script called run would be in there: Gnumeric.App/run and
> it would make sure all environment variables are properly setup.  A
> Gnumeric.App/dep-libs file could point to the dependencies of the
> application.

    This is a nice idea because it makes each application fully
relocatable on the file system.

    But it doesn't solve the installation problem.  What about when
the user needs to upgrade the libraries that Gnumeric uses, or any of
its other dependencies?  Where do you install libgnomeui?  You can
create a per-user library directory, sure, but then you'll find
yourself with two new problems (Every user is going to have a
completely separate installation of all the gnome libraries and
datafiles in his home directory, and then you lose all the goodness of
shared libraries in the buffer cache).

    You could have the Gnumeric.app/run script assemble a library path
that searched the system libs first.

    Unfortunately the installation dependency problems (checking for
an installed package in the system; then checking in the user's home
dir) are probably outside the scope of Gnome.

Nat