Article:		Creating Easy-to-Deploy Unix Applications for OS X
Subject:		Another Perspective
Date:		2003-11-03 03:20:00
From:		roseman
Response to: Another Perspective
Well, that's certainly one point of view, though not one I particularly agree with (and don't get me started on package managers!). The interesting challenge to me, and what the article was about, was how developers can retain the fantastics productivity benefits associated with some Unix developer tools, while still producing apps that are targeted at more mainstream users. Using primarily Unix technologies needn't restrict applications to the Unix elite audience. Fink and friends solve one problem, but not the problem mainstream users are interested in.

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• Another Perspective
  2003-11-03 12:20:01  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  Well I suppose my own perspective is skewed. I consider myself to be a mainstream user but I'm also a hobbyist programmer. I find the subject to be very interesting so I hope I wasn't insulting with my first comment.
  
  Fink coupled with Apple's X11 it makes harvesting the available applications easy. I guess I was confused about the point of the article because it mentions a missing "explosion" of unix apps on the mac platform.
  
  I agree that the development and deployment process could be simplified but I think there are some other things that need to happen before that can.
  
  Specifically look at the problem and suggested solution for dependencies. You suggested developers bundle the libs with the application. Specifically look at the problem and suggested solution for dependencies. You suggested developers bundle the libs with the application. I don't have much personal experience with embedding sqlite or any other technology in an app binary but in most Cocoa situations developers simply include the program in the app bundle. This isn't applicable to generic unix coding so including a subset is the best advice. I must say though when dealing with some of the more dependent libs on Unix it is difficult to separate the necessary functionality and I wonder how much this would add in terms of time to deployment.
  
  If we are to use subsets where should they be installed? I'm not posing this question as an obstacle. I am honestly curious about solutions. Where should developers install these library subsets. With many versions of the various libs out there some apps may rely upon features not found in certain versions of a given library so these would have to be installed to application dependent locations. This could develop a good deal of bloat.
  
  Might be an interesting project to develop a standard set of embed-able unix libs. Isn't that where a majority of the problem lies?
  
  Perspective Anonny