GoboLinux

Posted Jan 15, 2008 18:46 UTC (Tue) by pphaneuf (subscriber, #23480) [Link]

If you accidentally delete a normal application in OS X, you have to reinstall just that application. The definition of "normal" here is whether it came in a package or just as the application in a disk image. If it's a package, it's not normal.

Of course, it makes it kind of annoying that most of the applications that come with OS X itself (the iWork trial, Safari, iSync, etc) come from packages. In the case of those "abnormal" applications, true, you have to reinstall the package, which in their case, is the operating system itself (gah!).

The curious thing of note here is that the package manager hurts instead of helping. The applications that don't use the package manager are simple to deal with and don't pose the problem you mention! To follow through on that thinking path, one could simply get rid of the package manager entirely, rather than getting a "better" one.

What I would like is if the applications that came bundled with OS X were simply in a "Bundled Applications" directory on the installation media, where the installer could simply copy them the plain old way, and if you deleted one of them, you'd simply plop back the DVD and drag-and-drop it back into place, done and done.

Where OS X applications really drop the ball compared to sophisticated Linux package managers (by which I mean apt), is with updates. That is also the reason why the bundled applications are from a package (which you can reinstall separately, without reinstalling the entire operating system, I should point out) rather than the way I described.

What I'd really like is for people to think outside the box a little bit. For example, OS X applications being self-contained is a pretty interesting property, making installation and removal trivial (deleting an application is done by, well, deleting the application, that's quite straightforward!). Note that applications can register themselves for certain things, like being able to open certain types of files.

Now, picture that they can register where they came from (their "repository", in a certain way). The Software Update application could then handle updates for all applications that registered a repository, transparently, without introducing a "real package manager" (or, at the very least, the explicit steps of installing or removing a "package"). You'd still have a direct manipulation of the application for installing/removing, and you'd have automated updating.

I don't know about you, but I've never heard or seen such a thing, I think that'd be what some people would call innovation, possibly! Wouldn't it be nice that we came up with it first, instead of Apple?