[dev] Horde Installer

[Brent J. Nordquist]

How'd the presentations go?  Well-received, well-attended?

On Sun, 29 Jul 2001, Jon Parise <jon@horde.org> wrote:

> So I attended Andrei and Frank's "PHP-GTK" presentation at the
> O'Reilly Convention last week, and I have to say, it is one really
> cool use of PHP.
>
> Anyway, I was thinking it might be an interesting tool for developing
> a Horde installer application.

For those of us who weren't there, could you mention a few of the things
that you thought were cool; things that you see as advantages over just
straight PHP as an installer?

> Because the GTK stuff is pseudo-cross-platform (works under X and
> Windows), it would allow us to hit most of our target audience.
>
> The obvious downside is the need for the administrator to install the
> PHP-GTK (and GTK) stuff, but I don't know how harsh of a requirement
> that really is.

Yeah.  GNOME is out for Solaris, for example (we're planning to
standardize the desktop across our Sun and Linux lab workstations); I
think GTK would cover most of the popular platforms.

> Of course, this doesn't necessarily have to be _the_ Horde installer,
> but it would definitely be neat to have _a_ GUI Horde installer.

I think that's the bottom line for me; even if the GUI installer was the
one that was "recommended", most mature, getting most of the attention
etc., as long as it's *possible* for someone to create a different kind of
installer, I'd be OK with that.

> Thoughts on this?

The only other thing that comes to mind is the shifting nature of GTK.
You think PHP/PEAR has been irksome... GTK is worse, from what I've seen
just trying to get others' applications to compile and install.  LWN
called it "A maze of twisty little shared library updates, all
interdependent" :-) and I think that sums it up.  Something to consider
anyway.

-- 
Brent J. Nordquist <bjn@horde.org> N0BJN
Yahoo!: Brent_Nordquist / AIM: BrentJNordquist / ICQ: 76158942