Autopackage is a
free
Free may refer to:
Concept
* Freedom, having the ability to do something, without having to obey anyone/anything
* Freethought, a position that beliefs should be formed only on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism
* Emancipate, to procur ...
computer
package management system aimed at making it simple to create a package that can be installed on all
Linux distribution
A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one ...
s, created by Mike Hearn around 2002.
In August 2010,
Listaller and Autopackage announced that the projects will merge.
Projects such as
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. It has been downloaded approximately 40 million times as of January 2011, making it the 21st mo ...
and
Inkscape offered an Autopackage installer, and
Freecode offered 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 ( ; GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free and open-source raster graphics editor used for image manipulation (retouching) and image editing, free-form drawing, transcoding between different image file formats, and more specialized task ...
is 2.2.6, even though GIMP is now at version 2.8.2, as of August 2012).
Methodology
Autopackage was designed for installing binary, or pre-compiled, versions of non-core applications such as
word processors,
web browsers, and
personal computer games, rather than core
libraries and applications such as
operating system shells.
Concept of autopackage was to "improve" Linux to a desktop
platform, with stable binary interfaces comparable to Windows and MacOS.
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 and
deb. Unlike these formats, Autopackage verifies
dependencies by checking for the presence of deployed files, rather than querying a
database 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 Project
Listaller simply includes the Autopackage packages into its own package container format and handles Autopackage like any other Listaller package file.
See also
* AppImage
* Flatpak
* Zero Install
* Listaller
* Package management system
* Bundle (software distribution)
* Linux package formats
A package format is a type of archive containing computer programs and additional metadata needed by package managers. While the archive file format itself may be unchanged, package formats bear additional metadata, such as a manifest file or certa ...
* List of software package management systems
This is a list of notable software package management systems, categorized first by package format (binary, source code, hybrid) and then by operating system family.
Binary packages
The following package management systems distribute apps in binar ...
References
External links
*
{{Linux package management systems
Archive formats
Free package management systems