Re: Automatic software installing (like Win. 2000)
On Thu, Aug 26, 1999 at 01:19:56PM -0500, Ashley Clark wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Aug 1999, Sami Dalouche wrote:
> > I would like to know if there's a possibility with apt (or something else)
> > to do the same that windows/Office 2000.
> > It installs automaticly new software from the CD when you want to start a
> > non-installed function.
> >
> > It could be great if under Debian, when we type a command that don't exist,
> > it would automaticly search the command from a small APT database or from the internet if diald|direct connection is here.
> > And we could specify in a conffile to download the software or to install
> > directly from the CD.
> >
> > Wouldn't it be cool ? Is it possible to program ?
>
> Egads man! That would be a lot of work, for it to work (I personally wouldn't
> want it on my machine for numerous reasons) you'd have to make *EVERY* program
> that executed a program check with apt/dpkg to see if a package contains that
> executable. The only other way around it would be to write a wrapper program
> that would take as arguments the command line to search for and possibly
> install. This would be easier but you'd still have to tell all other programs
> to change what they execute in order for your program to search for new
> packages.
<sarcasm>
You could just get really spiffy and rewrite glibc's exec*() calls to do
all of this. Then when you execute a command as root, like accidentally
typing ssh instead of sh, then all of the sudden you have an import/export
restricted piece of software automatically installed on your system!
Or better yet run some scripts that try to exec programs that aren't
available and see how much you can overload your bandwidth!
</sarcasm>
Sorry, auto updating packages to the latest version is one thing, but auto
installing is down right dangerous. Just because it's "nifty" and "easy"
doesn't mean it's a good idea. Gee, Windows itself is "nifty" and "easy"
isn't it? :)
Ben
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