[Gambas-user] Gambas self-extracting installer (4)

[Tobias Boege]

On Mon, 28 Oct 2013, Ian Haywood wrote:
> On Sunday, October 27, 2013, Benoit Minisini
> <gambas at ...1... <mailto:gambas at ...1...>> wrote:
> > But I don't think it's a good idea to ask for the root or sudo password
> > to installed Gambas package, for security reasons (can you really trust
> > that self-extracting installer?)
> >
> > Instead, I think I will just tell the user which packages he must
> > install himself before being able to complete the installation.
> 
> An installer without root access doesn't seem that useful IMHO as it
> would end up just displaying a long list of complex commands to enter
> into a terminal.

I seem to have lost track of the *what* which we want to install.
Originally, Benoit wanted an installer for official Gambas packages. Then
Kendek came and suggested a gambas3-installer component.

So, are we still at "installing Gambas3 packages" or at "installing
something that depends on Gambas3, like applications written in Gambas?"

In the latter case (and even sometimes in the first case, still), I can
imagine that we don't need root privileges: Personally, I tend to keep some
stable version of Gambas under $HOME/bin next to trunk in /usr/bin. If you
want to install software for your local user, you would likely do it in your
home directory, under something like $HOME/bin and this doesn't need root
privileges.

Well, most people will not have a second Gambas under $HOME/bin, I think,
and this is definitely nothing the self-extracting installer should do (or
even offer) when installing Gambas3 official packages from a repository.
Since, if people use the installer, they don't have Gambas3 and don't know
how to set it up correctly.

But especially for Gambas applications, I could imagine that people want
them to install to $HOME, instead of /usr because it is sometimes less
hassle to maintain - or they have got a program from a friend and don't want
to mess up their /usr or something. I myself do it like this, at least.

I hope, I got the situation right :-)

Regards,
Tobi

-- 
"There's an old saying: Don't change anything... ever!" -- Mr. Monk