[chbot] Updating a program: which Way did I use to install it?

[Henri Shustak]

I would say that PacMan for Arch is pretty amazing! I would also say that
because I am a heavy user of macOS, that HomeBrew is also probably the best
for the macOS platform. There are lots of systems and they all have their
ways like you said. I think it is nice to have choice. My concern is that a
lot of software today has sooooooo many dependencies. I think that down the
road, it will cause issues having so many dependencies especially if a
developer stops maintaining said software.

On Tue, Aug 25, 2020 at 11:29 AM Stephen Irons <stephen at irons.nz> wrote:

> General grumble
>
> There used to be a few packaging systems (deb, rpm, emerge, pacman, etc),
> but each distribution chose Their Way and it was the Only Way for that
> distribution. Of course, every thought Their Way was The One True Way. But
> at least I knew how to update a package.
>
> However, we now also have 'portable' packaging systems (AppImage, Flatpak
> and Snap and probably others) which can be installed on any distribution.
>
> Then Python has its Way too (pip), and I see that I have at least one
> Useful Program (youtube-dl) installed using this Way.
>
> Some applications choose only One Way to release their software, so I have
> to use that Way to install the software, so, in general, I cannot settle on
> a single Way, even if there were a Preferred Way. So now, the burden is on
> Me to remember which Way each application has chosen.
>
> Specific problem
>
> I am trying to update Musescore to version 3.5.3 on Ubuntu 20.04. I am
> using version 3.2.3. Approximately this version (3.2.3-and-some-change)
> exists in the Ubuntu repos, but this is not installed. I remember
> installing one of the portable versions when 3.2.3 was the Next Best Thing,
> before it was available as a deb in the repo. But I cannot remember which
> Way I ended up using.
>
> Musescore makes new versions available as AppImage, Flatpak and Snap;
> these eventually end up in the Ubuntu repo some month later.
>
> When I auto-complete 'musescore' it completes as 'musescore-portable'
> which 'which' tells me is '~/.local/bin/musescore-common'. There also
> exists '~/.local/bin/mscore-common', where 'mscore' used to be the name of
> the executable when people thought that shorter executable names were
> better.
>
> *** Does anyone recognise which Way would install a binary as
> '~/.local/bin/xxx-portable'?
>
> General questions
>
> *** Is any one of these packaging systems (AppImage, Flatpak, Snap, Python
> pip) significantly better or worse than any other? What are the pros and
> cons?
> *** Are there any rules of thumb to work out which Way to update an
> arbitrary program?
>
> Thank you
>
> Stephen Irons
>
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