Off-Topic > Off-Topic - Tiny Tux's Corner

Igelle

(1/2) > >>

danielibarnes:
Igelle is a new Linux distribution. In particular:

DW: How does Igelle handle packages and updates? Does it have its own package manager?

MK: Igelle's software management philosophy is quite different from what people may be used to with traditional Linux distributions. First of all, Igelle itself is installed as a read-only Squashfs file system that in itself is not modified at all before or after installation. So when adding additional applications, and when removing them, they too are installed as read-only file system images that are copied to a certain folder on the storage drive. This makes software management really fun and easy; it involves just copying the application file (we use the extension .sjapp) to the /apps directory on the hard drive; and uninstalling includes removing this file.

We have also included an easy-to-use compiler tool within Igelle that allows anyone to make their own sjapp application packages. This is, of course, a sort of a technical task, but does not require the user to be deeply technical and experienced with details of making and using build systems. So we're sort of trying to lower the bar to compiling software from source code and helping more people to make their own favourite packages. I also hope that this will help people to be able to keep up to the latest versions of their favourite applications, something that has been a little bit of a challenge with Linux distributions in the past. There is documentation on the Igelle web site for using sjapp to make your own packages so that those who are interested in this can get started.

So yes, Igelle has its own software that manages all these things. It can be considered the Igelle "package manager", although probably "application manager" is a term that hits closer to what it is.

alu:
i have seen it today on dww, it makes me curious about the promises, especially to make it run on arm architectures which is not current; currently, there is little software available, but i shall look for that when it comes to arm with network services available

danielibarnes:
I see it as a hybrid of the T2 Project and Tiny Core. T2 supports many architectures, including ARM, and Tiny Core is very modular.

SamK:

--- Quote from: danielibarnes on March 29, 2010, 01:27:08 PM ---Igelle is a new Linux distribution. In particular:

DW: How does Igelle handle packages and updates? Does it have its own package manager?
[...]

--- End quote ---
This seems to dovetail with this thread opened by roberts:
http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=5558.0


Many of the responses to the LWN article are technical arguments relating to the efficiency of using the approach adopted by Igelle.  The majority of computer users are not technical users, but users of a tool which allows them to achieve their goal.  They are more interested in how effectively the computer helps them to do this.

From the perspective of a non technical end user, the Igelle method has the attractions of simplicity and reliability in use.

If Core were to adopt this method it will broaden its user base by appealing to this large group of non-technical users.

[^thehatsrule^: url]

Jason W:
I downloaded and ran Igelle and it is indeed a very nice and polished distro.  

The package management is essentially the same as the .uci approach used for a long time with another distro.  With a 600MB base iso, one would not have to bundle gtk2, qt, gnome libs, sound system (alsa, OSS) or a lot of other stuff that would have to be bundled if a totally self contained app was used on TC.  Of course, those libs could be simply installed as deps and an app itself could be installed into it's own directory.  There is a time and place for self contained apps, it does allow for multiple versions of an app to be installed at the same time.  But self contained packages are more tedious to build against if using them as dependencies.

Gobolinux installs each package into it's own directory, then symlinks the libs, headers, and binaries into /System/Links/libraries, /System/Links/headers, and /System/links/executalbes - I may have the naming wrong.  Kernel modules are similar.  That makes for a single $PATH for each one of them and makes building against installed packages easier than with a totally self contained approach.  Then to uninstall a package, I think their approach is to delete the application directory and clear the system of dangling symlinks.  

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page