3 ms·

> I like having software that is up to date and delivered direct from the developer. I really think your argument against package managers on Linux is incorrec

> I like having software that is up to date and delivered direct from the developer. I really think your argument against package managers on Linux is incorrect. Many linux distributions provide "some recent version" of common tools, but of course you can get the latest package directly from the developers. Nothing stops you from getting the latest packages directly from the developer (assuming the developer provides packages in the first place). Some developers even offer their own repository you could add to the package manager so you can stay up to date regardless of whatever version you don't like in the OS repository. > I like having portable applications that don't even need installation. You can build from source and run without installing. That's probably not quite what you mean though. > I like being able to put applications on different disks. No problem here. You can mount disks to wherever you want and you can install using a prefix path to those locations. > I like being able to have multiple versions of an application. Prefix path to the rescue here too. Edit: answered more of your concerns

Dylan16807 8y ago
Compiling most things is decidedly nontrivial. Half an hour of wasted time is not appropriate just to install something in a different directory. A package manager really should be able to do prefixed installs on any package, but that's far from a universal feature right now.
- inetknght 8y ago
  > Compiling most things is decidedly nontrivial. I've spent the past five years building a lot of things from source. I agree that there are definitely a lot of things that it's nontrivial for. However, I've found that the hardest part is satisfying dependencies. Once dependencies are satisfied, building is usually really easy. And the software that isn't easy to build after satisfying dependencies is usually not worth building in the first place. Of course, that's just my experience as a C++ developer.
- swiley 8y ago
  Gentoo can do prefixed installs, I'm reasonably certain alpine can as well. If you're on debian you can always just make a chroot with debootstrap.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
> but of course you can get the latest package directly from the developers. If you're willing to compile it from source, which I'm not since it isn't the 70s anymore. >... The rest of these are all the same thing: you can do these things as long as you compile from source. As I've already mentioned, I consider that a backwards and tedious way to deal with application installation. I mean ffs, getting build environments right is such a pain that many devs ship a docker container of a working environment. Not to mention it is only viable with OSS software.

Dylan16807 8y ago

Compiling most things is decidedly nontrivial. Half an hour of wasted time is not appropriate just to install something in a different directory. A package manager really should be able to do prefixed installs on any package, but that's far from a universal feature right now.

inetknght 8y ago
> Compiling most things is decidedly nontrivial. I've spent the past five years building a lot of things from source. I agree that there are definitely a lot of things that it's nontrivial for. However, I've found that the hardest part is satisfying dependencies. Once dependencies are satisfied, building is usually really easy. And the software that isn't easy to build after satisfying dependencies is usually not worth building in the first place. Of course, that's just my experience as a C++ developer.
swiley 8y ago
Gentoo can do prefixed installs, I'm reasonably certain alpine can as well. If you're on debian you can always just make a chroot with debootstrap.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago

> but of course you can get the latest package directly from the developers. If you're willing to compile it from source, which I'm not since it isn't the 70s anymore. >... The rest of these are all the same thing: you can do these things as long as you compile from source. As I've already mentioned, I consider that a backwards and tedious way to deal with application installation. I mean ffs, getting build environments right is such a pain that many devs ship a docker container of a working environment. Not to mention it is only viable with OSS software.