Compressed Application Images (from klik point and klik software)
If you want to run a new application, you simply download a .cmg file, a compressed image file that contains the application together with everything that is needed to run it. Basically it is a compressed filesystem image containing an AppDir.
Imagine a .deb that you can run directly without installing it: that’s .cmg
This could revolutionize Linux application packaging. It’s click-and-run as it was meant to be And it’s available today!
The advantages are numerous:
* No more software installations
* One single .cmg file per application
* Total transparency about what is installed where (one .cmg file per app)
* You can store .cmg files where you want (HD, USB stick, CD-ROM, DVD) and run them from there
* Efficient use of storage space due to .cmg compression (saves 50%)
* No possibility to destroy anything (all is contained in a read-only .cmg file)
* Easy to give an application to a friend (just mail one .cmg file)
* Easy to keep your additional applications if you upgrade or change the base Operating System or move to another machine
* Makes it possible to run additional applications on Live CDs such as Knoppix or Kanotix
* If something doesn't work, simply remove one .cmg file and everything is reverted
* No need to be root in order to run new software
Compressed Application Images (from klik point and klik software)
If you want to run a new application, you simply download a .cmg file, a compressed image file that contains the application together with everything that is needed to run it. Basically it is a compressed filesystem image containing an AppDir.
Imagine a .deb that you can run directly without installing it: that’s .cmg
This could revolutionize Linux application packaging. It’s click-and-run as it was meant to be And it’s available today!
The advantages are numerous:
* No more software installations
* One single .cmg file per application
* Total transparency about what is installed where (one .cmg file per app)
* You can store .cmg files where you want (HD, USB stick, CD-ROM, DVD) and run them from there
* Efficient use of storage space due to .cmg compression (saves 50%)
* No possibility to destroy anything (all is contained in a read-only .cmg file)
* Easy to give an application to a friend (just mail one .cmg file)
* Easy to keep your additional applications if you upgrade or change the base Operating System or move to another machine
* Makes it possible to run additional applications on Live CDs such as Knoppix or Kanotix
* If something doesn't work, simply remove one .cmg file and everything is reverted
* No need to be root in order to run new software
This kind of thing is something that Michael Phipps already wants for R2 and has toyed around with it some. Performance was the only issue, but I have a feeling that it won’t die just yet.
Compressed image? Hmmm… that sounds like it wouldn’t scale too well. Launching or closing a moderate number of apps at once (startup and shutdown, for instance) could potentially eat up a lot of system resources (un)compressing a large number of files. BeOS apps are normally pretty good about not spreading files out all over creation or not requiring that the app is installed in a particular place. If app devs make an effort to keep an app’s files in a single folder as much as possible, you pretty much get the same “one-button uninstall” that macs have.
This would also throw a kink in our query system. Anyone who has run a virus scan that included compressed and zipped files has an idea of the delays that would probably occur when trying to index files in a bunch of compressed images.
I think here it is important that Haiku and its related apps try to avoid requiring “installation” as much as possible. Queries, symlinks, and standard locations for libraries, etc can come close to eliminating the need to design an app that cannot live entirely in its own folder (it’ll take some work to solve this completely, but a healthy number of BeOS apps already do this, and many more could with a small amount of tweaking).
Not so much compressed necessarily as packaged. Because of it shares some of its foundation architecture with *NIX, we can pull off some fancy-schmancy tricks using disk images. Imagine a file which you can mount just like a drive. Now picture double-clicking on this file to start a program to mount this file, find the program inside it, and run it. Michael Phipps and I have talked about this some and it’s a neat idea that can be done using current BeOS technology. As for performance, it does quite well because you’re not dealing with compression. Not that long ago I threw together a quick-and-dirty app which ran through just about all of these steps and I tested it out with Firefox. There wasn’t any noticeable lag in startup beyond what is expected with Firefox.
i wouldn’t say compressing it. but storing all files in one file. like a folder, except its not a folder but a file.
i say not compressing it because today there is more space than you need. and for 50 kb free space you waste 1mb of ram. you slow the system down.
its useful to have all files in an normally compressed zip file, because you know where to go. like a quake pak file, for example. i don’t think they have it compressed either. but they have all files stored inside. so quake has two files, executable, and pak file. easy. you cannot loose files this way. you either have them or you don’t.
you could use this cmg the same way the rpm works. except that your read from the file directly. you don’t need to install anything, if you don’t want to.
you could set up a repository of crm files (i meant cmg), and use a modified yum program to install whatever you want.
yum install netpositive
i know it sounds stupid. but beos has died. so people should move forward. steal as many good ideas as you can, and make the coolest operating system.
but the extension is not good. you could call it pkg, or bpk. or just .pakage. but don’t call it .dmg. please! no mac os in beos. macos killed beos if anyone cares to remember.
And it’s available today!
