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I once asked Colin Percival about doing an OS X front end as a commercial product, to be sold independently, because tarnsap is awesome and the user experience

I once asked Colin Percival about doing an OS X front end as a commercial product, to be sold independently, because tarnsap is awesome and the user experience isn't. Nothing came of it because he is sticking to his licensing, which would mean telling users to first install XCode before installing the GUI. It didn't seem like that would be a winner, so I moved on to other things. I greatly admire that he stuck to his position.

icebraining 11y ago
Couldn't it be done in the age-old tradition of UNIX/Linux GUI frontends to command line apps? It seems like your installer (or the GUI app itself, on first run) could do all the work of downloading the Tarsnap source, compiling it and then simply launch the CLI program to execute the actions. It'd take some dev work to set it all up, but could be transparent for the user.
- koenigdavidmj 11y ago
  On OS X that requires downloading a 2 GB package (Xcode) first to install the compiler and such. Users would rightly think that's overkill for a backup tool.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    Didn't that change a few years ago when they released the Command Line Tools for Xcode?
    - sigjuice 11y ago
      Yes. Also, installing the command line tools on a pristine system is easy and does not require downloading Xcode. Typing cc in Terminal will pop up a dialog box that will offer to install the CLT.
- revelation 11y ago
  So none of the verifiability/security, all of the hassle? Right, that sounds very much like the "age-old tradition of UNIX/Linux GUI".
  - icebraining 11y ago
    I don't get what you're saying. Why would you lose verifiability or security? And the hassle would be only for the developer, not the user. Oh, the installer would obviously check the source archive against a bundled copy of the current Tarsnap GPG key before compiling. I just wasn't detailing implementation details.
amdavidson 11y ago
cperciva announced that binary packages are coming in the future in the thread that announced the GUI[0]: Speaking of broadening Tarsnap's user base: Binary packages (for both tarsnap and this GUI) will happen at some point -- not that I recommend relying on binaries (since you lose the ability to audit the code), but in keeping with the UNIX/X11 philosophy of "tools, not policy" I want to allow users to decide the tradeoff between paranoia and ease of use for themselves. [0]: http://mail.tarsnap.com/tarsnap-users/msg01124.html http://mail.tarsnap.com/tarsnap-users/msg01124.html
- RexRollman 11y ago
  Then wouldn't something like this be a good candidate for reproducible building?

icebraining 11y ago

Couldn't it be done in the age-old tradition of UNIX/Linux GUI frontends to command line apps? It seems like your installer (or the GUI app itself, on first run) could do all the work of downloading the Tarsnap source, compiling it and then simply launch the CLI program to execute the actions. It'd take some dev work to set it all up, but could be transparent for the user.

koenigdavidmj 11y ago
On OS X that requires downloading a 2 GB package (Xcode) first to install the compiler and such. Users would rightly think that's overkill for a backup tool.
- icebraining 11y ago
  Didn't that change a few years ago when they released the Command Line Tools for Xcode?
  - sigjuice 11y ago
    Yes. Also, installing the command line tools on a pristine system is easy and does not require downloading Xcode. Typing cc in Terminal will pop up a dialog box that will offer to install the CLT.
revelation 11y ago
So none of the verifiability/security, all of the hassle? Right, that sounds very much like the "age-old tradition of UNIX/Linux GUI".
- icebraining 11y ago
  I don't get what you're saying. Why would you lose verifiability or security? And the hassle would be only for the developer, not the user. Oh, the installer would obviously check the source archive against a bundled copy of the current Tarsnap GPG key before compiling. I just wasn't detailing implementation details.

amdavidson 11y ago

cperciva announced that binary packages are coming in the future in the thread that announced the GUI[0]: Speaking of broadening Tarsnap's user base: Binary packages (for both tarsnap and this GUI) will happen at some point -- not that I recommend relying on binaries (since you lose the ability to audit the code), but in keeping with the UNIX/X11 philosophy of "tools, not policy" I want to allow users to decide the tradeoff between paranoia and ease of use for themselves. [0]: http://mail.tarsnap.com/tarsnap-users/msg01124.html http://mail.tarsnap.com/tarsnap-users/msg01124.html

RexRollman 11y ago
Then wouldn't something like this be a good candidate for reproducible building?