Activity packaging

[Thomas Leonard]

On Wed, 04 Aug 2010 20:05:06 +0100, pbrobinson at gmail.com wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 6, 2010 at 5:02 PM, Benjamin M. Schwartz
> <bmschwar at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>> On 07/06/2010 11:51 AM, Bernie Innocenti wrote:
>>> Ok, I think the requirements for activity bundles could be:
>>>
>>> 1) Support multiple CPU architectures
>>>
>>> 2) Support multiple distros (and different versions of same distro)
>>>
>>> 3) Centralized build cluster (submit one source package, get multiple
>>>    binary packages)
>>>
>>> 4) Support inter-bundle dependencies
>>>    (e.g.: GCompris + voices, OOo4Kids + dictionaries)
>>>
>>> 5) Support activity <-> OS dependencies (e.g.: espeak for Speak,
>>>    squeak for etoys...)
>>>
>>> 6) Work with any programming language (setup.py is python-centric)
>>>
>>> 7) Easy to learn for activity writers without too much distro-hacking
>>> experience
>>>
>>>
>>> These requirements would fit well both rpm and deb, with OpenSUSE
>>> Build Service or their native build clusters.
>>
>> I think you are missing an important requirement: installation without
>> elevated permissions.
> 
> PackageKit can already do that. There was a furore around 6 months ago
> when someone enabled it by default for Fedora.

I think that's a little different. Fedora allowed an unprivileged user to 
install a package, but giving the package full privileges.

For 0sugar, I assume, the user is fully privileged (it's their machine); 
it's the package that should be restricted, not the user.

This distinction has caused a lot of confusion in the past, and I've now 
added a section to http://0install.net/injector-security.html to try and 
clarify it.

I've also added a demonstration of using 0install for sandboxing, showing 
how sandboxed processes can still share libraries (which doesn't happen 
if you just create lots of separate RPM databases):

  http://0install.net/ebox.html

Hope that helps,


-- 
Dr Thomas Leonard		http://0install.net
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