On Thursday 28 May 2009, Kenneth Gonsalves wrote:
On Wednesday 27 May 2009 22:16:17 Rony wrote:
Even if you had a one click install on doze, the OS limitations would trump any easy installation procedure.
Why should FOSS always get associated with something that is not easy to setup whereas doze automatically is assumed to be one touch? Why not have one touch installation in FOSS?
just a question of priorities. We are more interested in getting the software to work - and work properly than in one-touch installs. However there are tools like urpmi and apt-get and yum and emerge which are all one-touch install tools. You will find however that it is very rare for the authors of the software to maintain these - packaging is usually done by 3rd parties. You could try out these tools - many of them have graphical interfaces which makes the installs for the vast majority of FOSS software one-click installs. It is very rare that one has to go through the './configure - make - make install route'.
I hear rumours that the latest versions of urpmi and apt-get and yum even list out and install dependencies. I know it is difficult to believe, but I have been informed of this fact by usually reliable people. Perhaps you could investigate and confirm or deny these rumours?
Apt always listed and installed dependencies. Of course one can always force an install if one is ready for a herculean fight.
Also as you point out packaging is the distro maintainers responsibility.
In the case of khata given it's target audience, a simple install would be ideal. Since the app is beta at this stage, hence unlikely to be included in any distro, and the people who could contribute (accountants) anything but tech savvy, the dev team will have to take the onus and release official betas. Something like automated nightly builds would be in order.
Which brings up the issue of available infrastructure. What is the available infrastructure?