From the package description: >The Zero Install System is a URI-based network filesystem, together >with a mechanism for running applications (including any necessary >libraries) directly off the internet. Instead of installing an >application, a zero-inst user can just start the application by its >URI. Any needed binaries are downloaded and cached locally, so there's >essentially no speed hit. For frequently-used applications, a user can >add a menu entry, web link, bash alias, etc. that points to the URI. > >Note that zero-inst is still a work in progress. Since it requires a >kernel patch, and the whole point is to run binaries directly from the >internet, it's probably a bad idea to use zero-inst on a production >system at this stage.
See http://zero-install.souceforge.net for more details. The zero-inst developers are all Rox users, so the documentation is a bit focused on Rox users, but it works just fine with any KDE, GNOME, or no desktop at all. However, at present, there are only a few demo programs available for zero-inst (all in /uri/http/zero-install.sourceforge.net/demo, and all built only for ix86), so it's not terribly useful yet. The source package builds two binary packages: zero-inst and zero-inst-kernelmod. You need to have the kernel source for the kernel you want to run against to build the package, and you need to be using the matching kernel version to install the -kernelmod package. I couldn't think of a good way to check this. I put in a "BuildRequires: kernel-source" but that doesn't really cover it. (What if you're using kernel-multimedia? Or if you've upgraded to a new kernel but still have the old kernel-source?) And there doesn't seem to be any way to make the binary package require the kernel version used for building (another feature for automated requirements gathering?). The kernel module handles the virtual filesystem; updating the cache is done with user-space tools. The tool to automatically download files the first time (zero-install) is pretty much complete, but the tools for throwing away old cached files when they're unneeded (or for updating to newer versions) aren't. Also, while zero-install is downloading files, the parent process locks up with no feedback, and the tools to see what's happening are only partially complete (try the 0show command-line tool). I slapped together an init script, RPM pre/post scripts, etc. in about a half hour, and they may need more work--it seems to work fine for me; that's all I can promise.
