Wednesday, February 20, 2019

package management - Automation of installing programs from source




I occasionally face a problem when using programs for which developers don't publish deb packages and only provide source. Sometimes I find a PPA providing the package but sometimes I don't or sometimes I don't trust the third party's version of the package because the program is rather sensitive from the security point of view (e.g. a password manager).



I can install from the source but this is ok to do once, not to do it on regular basis so as to install program's updates. Therefore, I'm thinking...



Is there a tool which would automate installation from the sources?




  1. Check for updated source. (e.g. in a Git repo)

  2. Download the code.


  3. Compile it in the background.

  4. Offer installation the similar way the Ubuntu's update manager would?



I guess I could probably put the process together using Jenkins and some custom coding but it's possibly quite a bit of work and I don't want to re-invent the wheel.



PS: Answers like the one for Atom editor lack some expected features when having to deal with the installation of multiple programs this way:




  • management of the configuration for each of them


  • download from different sources (tar archive, Git repo, etc.)

  • checking the source on daily basis and tracking whether there is a need to proceed with the update

  • resolving dependencies

  • check that the compilation succeeded

  • offer to install the package instead of installing it automatically



In other words, I'm looking for something that would put user-friendliness into the process.



Linuxbrew





Linuxbrew is a fork of Homebrew, the macOS package manager, for
Linux.




It is exactly what you are looking for.



You may check Homebrew page to understand What Does Homebrew/Linuxbrew Do?


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