On Sun, 7 May 2006, carmen wrote:
Think this could work? I am thinking something like .jar format.
considering one can already bundle code libraries in the same directory as patches/abstractions, what advantage does a format like .jar provide to offset the annoyance of having something to decompress when you want to start mucking with it?
It would be one single file which you double'click to run. Easy to move, copy, and execute. Plus it provides a small hurdle to modifying the contents, which makes it less likely that people will inadvertently break it, say by modifying one of the internal files by accident.
I had a thought recently: if we treat Pd like Java, ie like a framework to be installed, then all we need to do is make a nice cross-platform app packaging format. To make this work, we'd need to have file associations working. They already work beautifully on Mac OS X, and basically work on Windows (but every double-click opens a new instance of Pd).
i'd hate to have 10 copies of maxlib just because it was in a .jar, or 30 copies of pthreadVC.dll. but those are facts of life on an OS whose idea of packaging is "click setup and click 'next' 10 times" or "search the web, download a disk image, decompress a disk image, copy something off a disk image, unmount the disk image, delete the disk image"..
That's the idea of Pd-extended as a platform. If someone was already writing applications using Pd-extended, then its highly unlikely that they would go out of there way to copy files from Pd-extended install to their .jar thingy.
If there was a format were you could bundle all needed files into a double-clickable file format, then it would work much like an app as long as you have Pd installed.
im definitely for the idea of smarter package management. but i dont htink .jar is the solution. perhaps mapping the gige/hcs namespace to a webservice so one can go to http://pure-data.info/library/osc/route/ and there are your binaries in subdirs like i386-linux/ mac-x86/, online docs, etc...
I think you misunderstand a bit. I am talking more about a application format rather than a library format here. THe idea is something that would be a double-clickable app in one file that would include any dependencies that are not in the standard platform. That's basically what a .jar is used for. This format would also work nicely for distributing libraries that are not included in the standard install.
.hc
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