-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Eduard Bloch wrote: [...] > If you want to keep the files aside but ie. > compressed than you should use a compressing filesystem. > But if you want something working on access, expect it to perform very bad. > Ie. if you want to install the files from original package files on > access, then you need some daemon that fetches them, you need a > kernel-based add-on to interrupt the file IO when the application > touches the file (everything including stat, not just reading), and you > need to make sure that your network is always in perfect state. > > IMHO those are just too many unsafe requirements that make the whole > approach insane on this level of an operating system.
Actually, you might be interested in looking at Zero Install, which does pretty much what the OP wanted: http://0install.net/ It used to use a FUSE plugin, but I see they've stopped requiring that with the new version. The way it works is that all applications are referred to by URL, and to launch an application, you do '0launch <url>'. The application and all its dependencies is fetched if needed, and then run. The cache directory can be purged whenever necessary; the next time the application is run, it'll just be refetched. It's distribution-agnostic, secure (inasmuch as that it'll only run signed binaries), incredibly simple to use, doesn't require any root permissions, and it's in lenny (zeroinstall-injector). - -- ┌── dg@cowlark.com ─── http://www.cowlark.com ─────────────────── │ │ "There does not now, nor will there ever, exist a programming language in │ which it is the least bit hard to write bad programs." --- Flon's Axiom -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGywtVf9E0noFvlzgRAqUJAKC/KDFxYW5LWro4Wtxy/9Y6G/CyjACgit40 ztgoNxGq8bp+ck2NgS8ra9Y= =yB3H -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----