"Wesley J. Landaker" <wjl@icecavern.net> wrote in message news:20060618234332.30829.65542.reportbug__43.3442452505872$1150674723$gmane$org@localhost...
Package: wnpp Severity: wishlist Owner: "Wesley J. Landaker" <wjl@localhost> * Package name : googleearth-package Upstream Author : Wesley J. Landaker <wjl@icecavern.net> * URL : (native package) * License : GPLDescription : utility for automatically building a Google Earth Debian packageGoogle Earth is a great program now available for GNU/Linux, but sadly is both non-free and non-distributable. For those who wish to run it on their Debian system, but wish it to be managed by the normal Debian packaging system, this program will assist in building a local Debian package in a similar fashion to java-package. This package *itself* contains absolutely no code from Google and is 100% free. (For the curious, this is appropriately destined for contrib.)
Is this really needed? Google was very careful in making sure that the package installs in /usr/local, and does not interfere with the system. Normally the main reason why a debian package is better than what upsteam distributed is because using upstreams packages will mess with stuff it should not touch.
The reason java-package is needed is that upstream's packages are not well behaved, and install into /usr, potentially causeing problems if it decides to edit the files of other packages.
Google Earth takes care of its own updates by prompting the user, and allowing them to download and run the new installer (or at least it does on windows, and I can't imagine why the linux version would not). Needing to use a *-package utility prevents automatic updates anyway, and does not simplify installation much if any. So the only real advantage would seem to be that it would make Google Earth easier to uninstall. Well I guess it simplifies pushing updates out to a bunch of workstations, but in most cases users should just download the the .bin and run it.