charlieg Wrote:For something like VDrift that runs as an end-user app (a leaf application, if you will) and not a library, not being 'integrated' with the local package manager is not an issue, you can just download updates as and when you need them.
I'm pretty sure there is a significant number of users that disagree with you here. Take for example the hordes of Debian users who routinely do an apt-get upgrade or whatever to get all the latest and greatest. How many end-user apps do you have on your system? 50? 100? You want to upgrade all of those separately, from different sources all over the net?
charlieg Wrote:Also apt/rpm is not a 2-prong solution. A .deb built for Ubuntu will most likely not install on a Debian system, and a .deb built for Debian will not always install on Ubuntu. The scenario is even worse with RPM
That's because most rpms (and all debs) are specifically tailored for a single distribution. I maintain that you can easily create generic rpms which are just as "portable" as autopackages.The "issue" autopackage tries to solve is in my eyes philosophical rather than technical, and doing so using a not quite unsubstantial amount of FUD. Whether that is intentional I don't know. I don't want to start a flamefest here, though, so I'll try to wrap this up.Autopackage seems to have some value for users. Fine. To obsolete/supercede package managers like rpm/apt there's still a long way to go, though, and to me it's questionable whether that's a realistic goal at all without doing something like Gentoo does and providing source-based packages (if you don't accept my system as a valid example (which I can understand to some extent, but a good solution should be able to cope with it since the underlying technology hasn't changed substantially) just take one of the PPC distributions).
