this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2024
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Being real, why DON'T distros just have the ability to do the installation if you double-click whatever file is downloaded?
I feel like we should have either option - download and double-click or just use the command line.
I mean, what else would double-clicking a .tar.gz file or an appimage do than install it (yes, I know, look into the archive, but really - how often is that the desired thing to do)? So, therefore, why don't we just have it install the files that are downloaded?
This is a legit question btw, I really don't know the answer
Do you not know what a tar.gz is? it's like a zip file. how are you supposed to install it automatically? the structure inside is unknown.
also, it's commonly used for things like backups.
How would the distro tell if the tar.gz is a program or just a bunch of compressed files? I tend to use tar files for compression rather than for distributing or installing software
Yes, but the header of the file says it's a binary, that is why it gives you the option to run as a program or open as a file. Because the OS knows that you can do either with binaries.
Some file managers might add the +x automatically if you choose to run the binary through the desktop environment (not the terminal)... or ask you if you'd like to mark the file as an executable (i.e. add +x to permissions).
You can't do it the same way with tar, what are you gonna execute, tar is neither a script or an ELF binary. It's like asking for a zip file to be executable, doesn't make sense. You can change the extension to .exe, but it won't run, it's not an exe, no MZ header, nothing 🤷.
Cause .tar.gz is not an executable binary in itself. It is more like a zip of the binary and its support files. Since it would be really difficult to distribute and maintain native binaries for every type of distro, application publishers used to just distribute for distros that has a larger userbase, like a .deb for Debian/Ubuntu and a .rpm for Fedora/RHEL/Suse, and then they would provide a tarball for any other distro. Flatpak and Snap have been introduced to eliminate this overhead from application developers, but they still offer tarballs as the newer solutions are still far from standardization.
I 100% get that (and I know it's an archive), but I'm just saying why doesn't double-clicking a .tar.gz just run "tar xf file.tar.gz | sh" on that file? Or check if there's an executable in the extracted files and then run it if there is, and if it's just an archive of files then open the extracted folder?
What if I don't want to install it, even if there is a binary in there? What if I just wanna open the archive and see it's content?
The OS does the smart thing. The header says it's an archive, so we treat it as just that, an archive. Commercial OSes like Windows and MacOS are the oddballs out, not Linux. It just interprets the cold hard truth - this is an archive, I have no idea what's in it, you tell me what to do with it, end of story.
Personally, I open tarballs quite often. Why? Just wanna know what's inside them.
Double click translating to install on tar.gz is not wise since anything can be packed in a tarball, a gzip archive or a gzipped tarball.
And then you have a similar problem with tar.xz (it's becoming more and more popular from what I can see). It doesn't use gzip to compress the archive, it uses LZMA, so you have to use xz instead of gzip to decompress the tarball.
Basically, it boils down to how UNIX used to work. Mind you, back in the day there were no package managers, it was all done with .tar.zip or make install. This really was hell to be honest... keeping track of what app installed what libraries and versions of it... yes it really was a PITA. This is the real reason why package managers were invented (thank god!) and why having only one package manager on a system is the preferred way to handle apps/software. Otherwise, you'll soon be in dependency hell. Shared libraries are at the core of any UNIX based OS. Yes, Flatpaks/Snaps/AppImages and package managers like nix circumvent this problem, but in no way is the problem gone. It's still there, we just don't mess around with it.
So, basically the idea of having an "installer" came quite late into the game. Plus, having to check on all dependencies and making an install script that worked on every single distro out there was just so complicated, that no one would ever want to go through with it. Sure, there are install.sh scripts in some pacakges out there, but they basically check nothig, it's more or less "copy this here, that there" which of course could be done by hand anyway... and then run the app and pray it has all of the dependencies it needs 😬... which it never does 😂.
A .tar.gz is a regular archive, the file manager shouldn't assume it's a program. Also, how do you expect it to work? There's no general rule for archives. As for appimages, one of their selling points is that you can run them portably, so it shouldn't install by default, but run. However, a right click install option would be nice.