Distributions / Package Managers Thoughts

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Distributions / Package Managers Thoughts

Postby dijitao » Fri Sep 27, 2013 5:16 pm

One of the challenges with Linux is how do you distribute your application? Right now there are three pretty popular formats for packaging: RPM, DEB, and TGZ. In the future Steam, especially in light of SteamOS might become another popular method of distribution. Personally I'd like to see at least DEB and TGZ supported, as DEB is going to be the most convenient package for most desktop distributions since Debian and subsequently Ubuntu variants seem to have the most market share here. As long as the DEB package doesn't have any dependencies, or minimal ones it should be compatible across a wide set of Linux distributions. Providing a TGZ archive is a good option because it will work everywhere, it's just less convenient because it won't utilize the systems package manager for installation, updates, uninstall, etc... Along those lines having a APT repository setup to download the application from would be fantastic since then you could fully utilize the package manager for things like pushing out updates. I think one more thing that makes DEB/APT look like the best option is SteamOS being based on Ubuntu will support it.

So DEB/APT to make things easy for the majority of users, and TGZ for everybody else would be my recommendation.
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Re: Distributions / Package Managers Thoughts

Postby Fildron » Mon Sep 30, 2013 11:47 am

Since .deb is basically an ar-archived compressed .tar with meta data and due to the popularity of Debian based Linuxes it would make sense to offer a .deb and a .tgz.
Further, a .tgz could easily be used in a PKBUILD or ebuild or whatever.
I'm not particularily a fan of Steam, but if and when PP is greenlit and with the Steammachine on the horizon which uses SteamOS which is Linux based, that format would probably make sense, too.
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Re: Distributions / Package Managers Thoughts

Postby sposkpat » Sat Jan 04, 2014 7:40 pm

I do not like Steam, I prefer a Debian amd64 *.deb file.
My favorite table is The Web. I hope it will be released real soon.
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Re: Distributions / Package Managers Thoughts

Postby sposkpat » Fri Jan 10, 2014 6:28 pm

I prefer a PP.deb file for Debian amd64, without any dependencies. It will last longer without dependencies I guess.
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Re: Distributions / Package Managers Thoughts

Postby mosc_athel » Wed Jun 04, 2014 1:03 pm

+1 to .Deb

Here Wheezy 64bits.
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Re: Distributions / Package Managers Thoughts

Postby mosc_athel » Wed Jun 04, 2014 1:05 pm

+1 to .deb and .tgz

Here wheezy 64bits.
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Re: Distributions / Package Managers Thoughts

Postby soundbyt3 » Sat May 09, 2015 12:26 pm

Ubuntu 14.04, so .deb and .tgz would be fine, I guess.
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