Re: Grand Unified System Installer (hurd distro) + my taughts and comments - new to hurd contributions, only taking my head out of the sand now.

[olafBuddenhagen]

Hi,

On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 10:56:01AM +0200, Arne Babenhauserheide wrote:

> > This is grand. And you can type apt-get install lynx and off you go.
> > I'm not saying it should be installed by default but I am saying
> > that where a known command was not found it should instead do
> > something like this
> >
> > ~/lynx http://www.gnu.com
> >
> > The 'lynx' interface is not up or the lynx software is not installed
> > on your system. Would you like to bring it up/install it now?
> > [u=up/i=install/c=cancel] - u (choose to bring it up)
> 
> You'd "just" need a database of available progams which can be
> accessed efficiently. 

This already exists, and AFAIK is installed by default on Ubuntu.

He was only suggesting to change the interface presented when the user
tries to launch one of the known uninstalled programs -- instead of
telling the command to use for installing, present an interactive prompt
that can install it directly.

This sounds like half a day's job, being very pessimistic. A wishlist
bug in Ubuntu would be a good start -- if it doesn't exist already.

However, I wouldn't hope for this to ever become the standard setting:
copying the command should pose no difficulty to anyone using the shell;
and it has a nice educational effect for real newcomers :-)

-antrik-