smart patch

[Hamish Robertson]

 Hey Gustavo,
You're in the ballpark. But It's still a 4 step process. It's still
too complicated for use in a developing country.

This is what I was thinking. Say I want to install skype on ubuntu
feisty. Skype needs 2 dependancies in ubuntu to run. Normally smart
would download skype, and it;s dependancies then install everything in
the right order. What if we froze everything into an archive just
before it installed? The frozen file (a .smart file?) would be
automatically created by smart and contain the skype package, it's
dependancies and the smart install script.

The .smart file would be associated with the smart package manager.
When a user double clicks on the file, smart opens, unpacks the .smart
file and continues with the installation.

My theory is that, we could move this smart file to another copy of
ubuntu feisty (with smart package manager installed) on another
computer and it would install automatically in 2 clicks.

Smart does everything already, all that needs to be added is the
freeze function and the ability for it to open up .smart files.

Is this do-able?

Hamish



On 01/08/07, Gustavo Niemeyer <gustavo at niemeyer.net> wrote:
> Hello Hamish,
>
> > My name is hamish robertson and I'm trying to put together a distro
> > for use in Laos. I'm not sure if you read my email on the mailing list
> > but we really need a way to install programs in linux without the
>
> I've read it, and I'm still trying to digest.  I'm not completely
> sure about the nature of the feature you're looking for.
>
> > internet. People here will take their USB stick to an internet cafe,
> > load the program on their memory stick and then try and install it on
> > their computer 30 kilometers away. We all know what's going to happen
> > when they try that with rpm files. :)
>
> That's feasible with Smart right now.  You can do something like:
>
>  1. Run: smart upgrade --urls > needed-urls.txt
>  2. Take needed-urls.txt to the internet cafe, and download these files.
>  3. Go back home, and put all files in a directory.
>  4. Ask Smart to install these files.
>
> Am I too far off track, or are you indeed looking for something
> like that?
>
> --
> Gustavo Niemeyer
> http://niemeyer.net
>