Autopackage - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Autopackage is a free

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

computer package management system

Package management system

In software, a package management system, also called package manager, is a collection of software tools to automate the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing software packages for a computer's operating system in a consistent manner...

aimed at making it simple to create a package that can be installed on all Linux distribution

Linux distribution

A Linux distribution is a member of the family of Unix-like operating systems built on top of the Linux kernel. Such distributions are operating systems including a large collection of software applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, media players, and database applications...

s.

In August 2010, Listaller and Autopackage announced that the projects will merge.

Projects such as aMSN

AMSN

aMSN is a free Windows Live Messenger clone. aMSN attempts to emulate the look and feel of Windows Live Messenger, and supports many of its features...

and Inkscape

Inkscape

Inkscape is a free software vector graphics editor, licensed under the GNU General Public License. Its goal is to implement full support for the Scalable Vector Graphics 1.1 standard....

offered an Autopackage installer, and Freshmeat.net offers content submitters a field to put the URL of Autopackages. The list of available packages is very limited, and most program versions are obsolete (for example, the most recent Autopackage of GIMP

GIMP

GIMP is a free software raster graphics editor. It is primarily employed as an image retouching and editing tool and is freely available in versions tailored for most popular operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, and Linux.In addition to detailed image retouching and...

is 2.2.6, even though GIMP is now at version 2.6.10, as of August 2010).

Methodology

Autopackage is intended to be used for installing binary, or pre-compiled, versions of non-core applications such as word processor

Word processor

A word processor is a computer application used for the production of any sort of printable material....

s, web browser

Web browser

A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...

s, and personal computer game

Personal computer game

A PC game, also known as a computer game, is a video game played on a personal computer, rather than on a video game console or arcade machine...

s, rather than core libraries

Library (computer science)

In computer science, a library is a collection of resources used to develop software. These may include pre-written code and subroutines, classes, values or type specifications....

and applications such as operating system shells. Autopackage is not intended to provide installation of core applications and libraries for compatibility reasons. Using Autopackage to distribute non-core libraries is something of a thorny issue. On the one hand distributing them via Autopackage allows installation on a greater range of systems, on the other hand there can be conflicts with native package dependencies.

Autopackage is intended as a complementary system to a distribution's usual packaging system, such as RPM

RPM Package Manager

RPM Package Manager is a package management system. The name RPM variously refers to the .rpm file format, files in this format, software packaged in such files, and the package manager itself...

and deb

Deb (file format)

deb is the extension of the Debian software package format and the most often used name for such binary packages. Like the "Deb" part of the term Debian, it originates from the name of Debra, erstwhile girlfriend and now ex-wife of Debian's founder Ian Murdock.Debian packages are also used in...

. Unlike these formats, Autopackage verifies dependencies by checking for the presence of deployed files, rather than querying a database

Database

A database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information...

of installed packages. This simplifies the design requirements for autopackage by relying on available resources, rather than necessitating tracking all the package choices of all targeted distributions.

Programs that use autopackage must also be relocatable, meaning they must be installable to varying directories with a single binary. This enables an autopackage to be installed by a non-root user in the user's home directory.

Package format

Autopackage packages are indicated by the .package extension. They are executable bash scripts, and can be installed by running them. Files in an Autopackage archive are not easily extracted by anything other than Autopackage itself as the internal format must be parsed in order to determine file layout and other issues.

Autopackage programs are installed to hard-coded system paths, which may conflict with existing packages installed by other means, thus leading to corruption. This can usually be remedied by uninstalling an older version of a package being installed with Autopackage.

The Autopackage files can also be installed and removed using the Listaller toolset. Listaller simply includes the Autopackage packages into its own package container format and handles Autopackage like any other Listaller package file.

Methodology

Package format

See also