[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] Shared Libs and Application Installer

[From: Gustavo Sverzut Barbieri]

On 12/22/05, Eduardo de Barros Lima <eblima at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi list,
>
>     Working on hacking some gnome applications like Abiword, Gnumeric,
> Evince and Rhythmbox to Maemo Platform, I realized something
> important. All of them depend on libglade which is shipped within each
> package. So if you have at least two of above applications installed
> in your device and you want to remove one of them,  the other apps
> won't work anymore because libglade will be removed too.
>
>     A solution for this case would be create a separeted package for
> libglade, but i think if we have to do this job for each and every lib
> on the system, the application installer loses its meaning. An
> alternative was to link the library statically, but as we take so much
> care our free space, it would be a waste of it. I see libglade is
> included in the SDK image, but it is not in the product image, so I
> think the better solution is to include it in the newer versions.  Any
> comments?

Hi Eduardo!

That's in my list of "things to fix", together with installation on
MMC and enable users to share applications peer-to-peer (like Palm
users can "beam" each other).

I need to implement my ideas and see how they fit into dpkg, probably
they don't, but the scracth is like this:

You can install applications and they know their dependencies. When
you talk to the "server" (it can be an app server or other maemo user)
you'll get the list of dependencies, you'll reply with dependencies
you don't have, then together with the App, you'll get the
dependencies... transparent to user. Probably you will not distribute
an "abiword.deb" on your website but and "abiword.app", that will have
"abiword.deb" and "libglade.deb". If you already have libglade.deb, it
will not install it, just abiword.deb. This is a _scratch_, I'll write
some wiki pages on it before implementing.

This is also related to other feature I want: to beam apps between
users. This system will need to "reconstruct" packages from installed
files, with safety to configuration files and also remember need
(pre/post) scripts.

--
Gustavo Sverzut Barbieri
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