On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 12:20:46AM -0700, Brad Roberts wrote: > On 9/27/2012 12:02 AM, Iain Buclaw wrote: [...] > > For #4, yes. Ubuntu is a better platform to approach for externally > > built binary-only packages. But for debian, you could possibly do > > something similar to how eg: the flash-plugin installer package works > > - downloads the tar.gz/zip from an external site, extract and install > > / configure in system. > > On reflection, #4 is not going to work for dmd.. neither ubuntu nor > debian, nor most distributions are going to be happy with the license > situation. Nor are they happy with binary only packages anyway. The > right path is to do #4 but only for use on the dlang.org site (hosted > via github's downloads api). Then, add step #5 which is to automate > source bundling and pushing to distributions. [...]
Yeah that's the other way to do it: build your own .deb's, and create an apt repository on dlang.org (or somewhere), then publish the repository URL. Then users can simply add the URL to /etc/apt/sources.list, and they will be able to use apt-get/aptitude to directly download and install it. You can even include a file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d in your .deb, so that once users install it the first time, the next package upgrade will automatically pull any new versions from dlang.org. As an example, this is what Opera does. T -- Never step over a puddle, always step around it. Chances are that whatever made it is still dripping.