On Fri, 05 Aug 2011 22:20:09 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> On 8/5/2011 21:20, Jim Henderson wrote:
>  > "one distinction between "lame port of a Windows app" and "real Linux
>  > software" is exactly whether you distribute as a tarball or as a
>  > package."
>  >
>  > Factually incorrect, as I said, ask anyone using Slackware what they
>  > think of that statement and they'll laugh you out of the room.
> 
> Does a tarball on Slackware actually track dependencies? I think any
> general statement you make about Linux is going to be wrong in at least
> one distribution. Plus, that's one distinction. He's obviously talking
> about the distros that actually have packages.

It's been a long time since I installed a package on Slack, so I don't 
know how they track dependencies.  But my point is that he says that 
distributing a tarball doesn't make it "real Linux software", but a "Lame 
port of a Windows app".  There are plenty of software packages for Linux 
that are only distributed as a tarball.  Truecrypt comes to mind, 
actually.  One might argue that there is also a Windows version of 
Truecrypt so it might qualify as a "lame port of a Windows app" until one 
realizes that architecturally, the Linux version is quite different 
(doesn't require a system-level device driver on Linux, but it does on 
Windows - for example).

If he's "obviously talking about the distros that actually have 
packages", then the point becomes meaningless because it's self-
referential.

>  > Factually incorrect, since package management systems that use RPM or
>  > DEB allow for the creation of packages that won't install if a
>  > conflicting package is installed.
> 
> I think making a Chrome update package that won't install if Chrome is
> already present would be counterproductive.  What do you think the
> "conflicting package" would be?

Chromium, which is what he's talking about.  Chromium is different from 
Chrome.

Jim

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