Re: Some things GNOME really needs

[Adrian Hosey <ahosey snowcrash kiva net>]

: > 1. INSTALL WIZARD
: > I know alot of you think that rpm are great but for most the people that
: > use windows rpm -ivh --force --nodeps *.rpm, or whatever would scare the
: > hell out of them. Great you say, just use GnoRPM or a tool like that.
: > Two problems:
: > A. What about programs you have to compile, or aren't RPMs
: 
: Well, I wouldn't be pointing newbies at non-RPM packages. OK, I agree,
: some kind of automated installation program to type
: "./configure;make;make install" would make installation much easier for
: many people, but the reason it's not automated is because so many things
: can go wrong, and a program just can't account for that kind of thing.

Agreed that having a wizard build something from source is a tall
order. That shouldn't stop someone from taking a crack at it if they
want to.

I dig Gnorpm, I think it's great. But I think there's some merit to a
"unified" installation program that give you the same interface
whether you're on Redhat or Debian dealing with rpms or debs
respectively. This program could also transparently try running alien
if you try to install a deb on a Redhat machine or vice versa. Perhaps
if James is interested Gnorpm could grow into this tool.

Does Gnorpm prompt for install prefixes on relocatable packages?
Relocatable packages are rare enough that I haven't had a chance to
find out, but apparently with rpm 3.0 the package doesn't even have to
be built relocatable anymore, so this could be a good feature.

   - A