Car package

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Car package

Autopackage-logo.png
Autopackage ready to install software.png
Installation of Inkscape with Autopackage
Basic data

Maintainer Jan Niklas Hasse
developer Mike Hearn
Current  version 1.4.2
( May 24, 2009 )
operating system GNU / Linux
programming language Bourne-again shell
category Installation system ( package manager )
License LGPL ( Free Software )
www.autopackage.org

Autopackage was an alternative Linux software installation system. Their purpose was a simple installation of software , regardless of the Linux distribution . It should make life easier for both users and developers by making it possible to create a single package that the user can install and delete on any Linux system with one click. With the potential for direct distribution of software, the application provider has more control over product upgrade cycles. It has been used successfully by established open source projects such as AbiWord , Inkscape or Gajim .

functionality

Autopackage itself is a shell script that contains the program to be installed. Except for the bash , hardly any additional software is required. If Autopackage is missing on the system, the program will be downloaded and installed automatically. The installation of the program is script-controlled and can therefore be flexibly adapted and further automated. The installation process should require virtually no user interaction. Users can also be allowed to install packages without a root password . Dependencies are automatically resolved, downloaded and installed independently of the package management used in the master system. For better integration on the Linux desktop, there are graphical interfaces for both Qt and GTK + , but also a text-based interface for terminals.

Challenges

However, Autopackage is subject to some restrictions, especially in the area of ​​binary compatibility of the Linux ecosystem, which is why its distribution is manageable. As before, some problems have only been partially or not yet resolved. For example, using versions 3.4 or 4.0 of the GNU C ++ compiler with earlier gcc versions can produce ABI -incompatible code. This problem affects, among other things, the Qt toolkit, which is written in C ++.

The cooperation with the distribution's own package management does not always work smoothly either. Installed packages can be incorrectly identified as their own and these can be erroneously uninstalled in the course of changes, since the other package management system does not notice this uninstallation, but it is assumed that these packages are still available and this leads to incorrect package lists in both package managers.

Relocation of applications between different directories is also not provided in Linux; paths are typically hard-coded in the application at compile time. The autopackage library binreloc solves this problem by providing functionality comparable to the Win32 API function, GetModuleFilename()which enables directory relocatable applications and libraries.

Development history

The vision of the project started by Mike Hearn in 2002 was also to further develop Linux into a desktop platform . Technically, a binary-compatible platform with stable ABIs should be created, similar to Windows or Mac OS, for this purpose the LSB should be cooperated with. Another aspect should be a change of focus, away from the already well-developed “corporate desktop” administration tools and structures, to the desktop users and their need for “simple solutions”. This should go hand in hand with a sharper differentiation between application software and system software, which means that more differentiated security standards and update cycles could be applied. This far-reaching approach has been criticized by many in the Linux community, especially in the distribution environment.

In 2006, in a lecture at the Linux Foundation 's Free Standard Group's Packaging Summit Conference , Hearn was pessimistic about the chances of getting the major distributions to cooperate. The reason he cited was the competitiveness of the distributions, which prevented further development towards overarching standards. Hearn further criticizes the prevailing model of package management directly as "outdated" and "anti-democratic":

"The whole idea of ​​packaging / installation is bogus and leftover from the times when software was distributed on floppy disks, [...] The web 'instant activation' model is better but requires advances in client-side platforms first around streaming and security."

- Mike Hearn : Free Standard Group's Packaging Summit 2006

Although most of the technical problems were resolved and some well-known applications were also using Autopackage, the project did not succeed in gaining broader acceptance. In 2007, the author of the Linux.com article Autopackage struggling to gain acceptance concluded that one possible painful lesson from the Autopackage project was the apparent impossibility of making major changes to the infrastructure of the Linux ecosystem. Project initiator Mike Hearn eventually switched to Google and handed over project management for Autopackage.

The project was then discontinued in 2010, and the homepage referred to alternative projects: Listaller , Zero Install , portablelinuxapps.org (today AppImage.org ) and the MojoSetup . Parts of the code base were taken over from the Listaller project.

Similar software projects

  • Tabular comparison of the autopackage properties with other approaches, zero install analysis, klik table.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ web.archive.org .
  2. ↑ Mike Hearn: AutoPackage - Introduction to the Next Generation Linux Packaging ( English ) www.osnews.com. December 6, 2002. Retrieved February 18, 2012.
  3. ↑ Robert Staudinger: Distribution-independent packages with auto package - one for all . Linux magazine 2006/02. February 1, 2006. Accessed April 11, 2012: “ Although they work on the same principle, RPMs from Suse 9.2 do not run under Suse 9.3, and certainly not under Red Hat. The Autopackage project relies on a uniform standard for the creation of installation packages. The individual packages resolve their dependencies themselves. "
  4. ↑ Mike Hearn: Autopackage FAQ ( English ) autopackage.org. July 17, 2011. Archived from the original on January 22, 2009. Retrieved on January 21, 2012: “ What is autopackage? For users: it makes software installation on Linux easier. If a project provides an autopackage, you know it can work on your distribution. You know it'll integrate nicely with your desktop and you know it'll be up to date, because it's provided by the software developers themselves. You don't have to choose which distro you run based on how many packages are available. For developers: it's software that lets you create binary packages for Linux that will install on any distribution, can automatically resolve dependencies and can be installed using multiple front ends, for instance from the command line or from a graphical interface. It lets you get your software to your users quicker, easier and more reliably. It immediately increases your user base by allowing people with no native package to run your software within seconds. "
  5. ↑ Sean Michael Kerner: Autopackage 1.0 Targets Developers ( English ) internetnews.com. March 28, 2005. Retrieved January 21, 2012: “ “ RPM itself isn't that bad. The Big Issue is that RPMs are specific to particular distributions and distribution versions and sometimes even patch levels of those distributions, […] Autopackage gets around that problem by being universal. It also provides a consistent experience for all users, which means we can improve it faster than every distro doing their own thing can. […] I think you'll see RPMs become less common on sourceforge download pages, if only because they're such a pain to constantly rebuild, "Hearn said. "
  6. ↑ Joe Brockmeier: Autopackage 1.0 ( English ) lwn.net. March 30, 2005. Retrieved January 24, 2012: “ Overall, Autopackage is a very promising project. It makes it possible for third-parties to distribute software for Linux users […] It's too bad that such a system is still necessary at this time, but it fills a necessary gap until the day that Linux distributions can settle on a standard base system and packaging format. "
  7. ^ Bryce Harrington: Inkscape - A Union of Contributions Makes a Difference ( English ) www.osnews.com. June 2, 2004. Retrieved February 18, 2012: “ The latest contribution that I think will have widespread and exciting ramification's was brought to Inkscape quite out of the blue by Mike Hearn. Mike's project, called AutoPackage, seeks to solve the perennial problem of easily installing software on Linux. "
  8. ↑ a b Samartha Vashishtha: A conversation with the autopackage team ( English ) linux.com. January 17, 2008. Retrieved February 12, 2012.
  9. ↑ Random Collection of Current Linux Problems Binary Portability ( English ) autopackage.org. 2006. Archived from the original on May 18, 2009. Retrieved on January 23, 2012: “ This page was prepared for the OSDL meeting in December 2005. It describes many of the problems inherent to Linux we've encountered whilst distributing complex software in binary form to end users. It also offers a few suggestions for improvements. "
  10. ↑ Mike Hearn: Guide to Making Relocatable Applications (BinReloc 2.0) ( English ) autopackage.org. Archived from the original on January 25, 2009. Retrieved January 26, 2012: “ However, most applications are not relocatable. The paths where in they search for data files are usually hardd at compile time. On Win32, applications and libraries are easily relocatable because applications and DLLs can use GetModuleFilename () to obtain their full path. "
  11. ↑ a b Mike Hearn: Autopackage FAQ ( English ) autopackage.org. July 17, 2011. Archived from the original on January 22, 2009. Retrieved January 21, 2012: “ What's a desktop Linux platform? Why do we need one? Essentially, software is easy to install on Windows and MacOS […] because by depending on "Windows 2000 or above" developers get a huge chunk of functionality guaranteed to be present, and it's guaranteed to be stable. In contrast, on Linux you cannot depend on anything apart from the kernel and glibc. "
  12. ↑ Robin Miller: Young project leader hopes to make Linux software installation easier . newsforge.com. March 5, 2003. Archived from the original on March 10, 2005. Retrieved January 21, 2012.
  13. ↑ Mike Hearn: The user interface vision ( English ) autopackage.org. 2004. Archived from the original on February 1, 2009. Retrieved on January 25, 2012: “ We already have a great deal more power than the competition in the area where it most counts in the short term - the corporate desktop. [...] So, given that we already have power for those who most need it, the next place to push forward is in ease of use. "
  14. ↑ a b Bruce Byfield: Autopackage: Toward a universal package manager for the desktop ( English ) linux.com. December 1, 2005. Archived from the original on January 13, 2008. Retrieved on February 12, 2012.
  15. ↑ a b c d Bruce Byfield: Autopackage struggling to gain acceptance ( English ) linux.com. February 12, 2007. Archived from the original on March 31, 2008. Retrieved January 21, 2012: " If Hearn is correct, the real lesson of Autopackage is not how to improve software installation, but the difficulty - perhaps the impossibility - of large-scale changes in Linux architecture this late in its history. It's a sobering, disappointing conclusion to a project that once seemed so promising. "
  16. ↑ Jeff Licquia: Autopackage goes insane ( English ) licquia.org. March 2006. Retrieved October 21, 2012.
  17. ↑ Jeff Licquia: Autopackage Considered Harmful ( English licquia.org). March 27, 2005. Retrieved October 21, 2012.
  18. ↑ Mike Hear: on the future of autopackage ( English ) In: Mike's Journal . March 3, 2006. Archived from the original on July 15, 2006. Retrieved on February 13, 2012.
  19. ↑ Packaging summit . In: LSB face-to-face (December 2006) . linuxfoundation.org . December 6, 2006. Archived from the original on October 25, 2013. Retrieved on February 12, 2012.
  20. ↑ Mike Hearn: Packaging for people who aren't distros ( English ) Free Standard Group's Packaging Summit. December 1, 2006. Archived from the original on March 5, 2009. Retrieved January 21, 2012.
  21. ↑ The end of Autopackage on groups.google.com (November 2010, English)
  22. ↑ Launchpad.net announcement: Listaller and Autopackage will merge