Manage Packages Using Stow

dW writes "This article is about Stow, a software installation management utility for Linux that offers a number of advantages over the tried-and-true Red Hat and Debian package management systems. With Stow, you can package applications in standard tar files and keep application binaries logically arranged for easy access."

Comments

Re:Why can't it be more like Windows?

[IamTheRealMike]

In windows, I double-click setup.exe, a GUI pops up, I pick the destination and off it goes. Why can't someone make something like this for Linux?

A few reasons. Firstly, these programs are tremendously complex under the hood. Almost all generic ones (even light ones like NSIS) include their own scripting language. InstallShield 6 and up has used DCOM to provide remote procedure calls between the install script and the engine (ikernel.exe if you've ever wondered what that is). They do a lot of messing around under the hood in order to make things just work.

Even then, they are too primitive for Linux. For instance, they have only basic concepts of dependancies. The lack of proper dependancy management almost brought Windows to its knees in the mid-nineties. Simply packaging every dependancy inside one self-extracting archive is simply not possible on Linux in any scalable fashion, so we have to build dependancy resolvers like apt. Windows installers tend to be GUI only. And so on.

Now, systems like apt are pretty cool. When they work, they work really well. The problem is, that they tend to be built by distro projects, and then they are relatively tied to that distro. Apt as used on Debian for instance, is not the same as apt4rpm. URPMI is Mandrake, and emerge is basically tied to Gentoo, though I'm sure it could be generalised.

So, the real solution is not to build Windows style setup.exe files. The real solution is to make something like apt, but that can be easily used by everybody, so you rarely if ever come across software that doesn't use it.

There are two approaches to solving that problem. We're trying both at once. The first is to invent a new system, independant of the existing ones. See my sig. The second is to try and standardise key interfaces in a standards body, so that apt/urpmi/emerge and others can interoperate, and so you can plug distro-neutral packages into that framework. See here. Note - most of the activity so far related to that group has been off-list, hopefully there will be action starting in a few days.

because that would be bad

[g4dget]

In windows, I double-click setup.exe, a GUI pops up, I pick the destination and off it goes.

That works fine for a few applications. Linux has thousands of applications, and people tend to install hundreds of them (they are free, after all, so why not). Do you want to go through hundreds of GUI installers, and then hundreds of GUI updaters? I don't.

Why can't someone make something like this for Linux?

There are interactive installers for Linux packages, but they are usually a nuisance compared to a normal package.

But every time I download something that's not part of Debian it turn into a horrible experience I wish I would have never had.

Well, then don't install non-Debian packages. After all, there are plenty of Windows programs that come with horrible installers. As a Debian user, think of non-Debian packages as "programs that come with horrible installers", and then decide whether they are worth the trouble. (Note that you can usually import packages reasonably well via "alien".)

The package system you get with Debian (or RedHat, for that matter) is already so much better than anything you get for Windows that it isn't funny. If Linux developers adopted the equivalent of setup.exe more widely, that be a real blow to Linux.

Re:Why can't it be more like Windows?

[IamTheRealMike]

I've lost track of the number of times I've had to do the "upgrade tango" and install a dozen different packages just to satisfy the dependencies for a program I needed

That's why we have/need dep resolvers like apt. I rarely, if ever, hear Debian users complaining that dependancies are too complex. They don't need to care.

You don't want InstallShield

[Wee]

how long is it going to take for something on linux to do what installshield does on windows?

I was a build engineer for a large telecom company who had a commercial Windows product which used InstallShield. I wrote the installer for that product (twice). I've been using Linux since 1994 in various ways. I know InstallShield and I know Linux, and trust me, you don't want IS for Linux, no matter how much you think you do. People are better of sticking to whatever package management system comes with their distribution than pining away for something like InstallShield.

Having a single point of installation management is far superior (even with dependancy checking issues, like sometimes happens with RPM) than leaving it up to the software maintainers. Windows should have orginally shipped with such a centralized system IMO. Now they force software developers to jump through hoops (which cost money, incidentally) in order to get a sticker on their box saying their software was "Designed for Windows". Barring that "certification" a person can do whatever the hell they want in an installer, and your system can become an unorganized mess in very short order.

Even now on this Win2K machine I've got more than a dozen apps (most of which are commercially released) that aren't listed in the Add/Remove Programs applet. If I install something via RPM or apt, that can't happen. I just have to hope that one of those Win32 apps doesn't conflict with something else down the road, since there's no way to remove them programmatically. That's a critical flaw of Windows' installation setup, IMO. Just one that happens to come to mind, even. I could go on all day...

I admit not knowing about linux, and am doing little to change that.

Your parents must be terribly proud at having imbued in their progeny such an insatiable thirst for knowledge.

-B