Re: [Syllable-developer] Syllable installation system white paper

[Turki Al-M. <tur...@gm...>]

On 9/18/06, Vandervliet, Kristian <Kri...@an...> wrote:
> Turki Al-Marri wrote:
> > On 9/18/06, Vandervliet, Kristian wrote:
> >> Turki Al-Marri wrote:
> >>> I've arranged a white paper about Syllable installation system:
> >>> http://www.geocities.com/tigenius/SIS.html
> >>>
> >>> Please read it thoroughly and reply.
> >>>
> >>> Criticism is more than welcome, because we want to get it
> >>> right from the first shot ;)
> >>
> >> I don't want to dampen your enthusiasm and your energy is great,
> >> but you're making a fundemental error: You've assumed Syllable needs
> >> some form of complex package management system.  You're coming at
> >> Syllable from a Linux viewpoint, so your assumption here makes some
> >> sort of sense, but it is misguided.
> >
> > I posted it for a reason, to see what the other developers are
> > thinking. So this is not considered damping enthusiasm, it's
> > considered sharing ideas. I'm okay :)
> >
> > And the only assumption I made is that the average user expect a
> > double-click-and-go type installation, so it make sense if the user
> > just downloaded the package and run it.
>
> Equally, a user could just drag the ZIP file to /Application and unzip
> it,
> which is the preferred method.  The advantage here is that the user
> know *exactly* what they did, and there are nothing happening that the
> user can not see.

Most programs I ran into required more than that, so pardon my ignorance.

>
> >> Applications should not be complex enough to ever require the type
> >> of package management you propose.  Package managers do not belong
> >> on Syllable, because Syllable does not need them.
> >
> > It's not made because of complex applications, it's made to have a
> > unified method of adding and more importantly removing applications.
>
> The problem is that the very existence of a package manager adds
> complexity.  It may be acceptable if your existing software installtion
> scheme is already so complex that a package manager improves matters
> (See: UNIX) but on a system like Syllable there is little benefit.
> See also: MacOS, OS X, BeOS

So are we going to have something like packages in Mac OS, that would
be great :). But is it commercial software friendly?

>
> > For example an e-mail client may want to add an applet to check for
> > emails every x minutes at start up, what do you think would happen if
> > the user removed it with the current methods? The user will have to
> > dig in the scripts to remove the annoying error message caused by the
> > missing application.
>
> I'd expect such an applet to be inteligent enough to work out for itself
> that it's "Parent" application is missing and it would *disable itself*
> from running in the future, and exit, silently.
>
>
> >> You also make some technical errors:
> >>
> >> o Any installation system that automatically ran a shell script as
> >>   the root user is a huge security hole: there is nothing to stop
> >>   a malicious developer including "rm -rf /" or something equally
> >>   henious in a script.
> >
> > That's so true. Maybe we should a user that have access to the
> > necessary folders only, but when installing a driver root is
> > necessary.
> >
> > By the way, there is no system I know that don't have this security
> > hole. Even *nix.
>
> Yes this is true.  This is one good reason to try and avoid
> duplicating the problem on Syllable :)
>
> >> o ZIP is used on Syllable for a very specific reason.  As far as I
> >>   am aware, 7zip would be unsuitable for general use on Syllable
> >>   because it can not store attribute data.
> >
> > I wanted to use a format that I'm sure that it is 100% patent free.
> > But if zip is patent free then there is no reason not to use it.
>
> I am not aware of any patent issues surrounding ZIP  If there were
> patent issues we would still need to find a suitable replacement
> that can store attribute data inside the archive.
>
> --
> Vanders
> http://www.syllable.org
> http://www.liqwyd.com
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