Brain Storming Regarding Winapt - Package Management for Windows

[Shlomi Fish]

Hi good people!

I have an idea for a Windows-based open source project, that also has
a lot of commercial value. The idea is Winapt:

http://winapt.berlios.de/

Once finished, it will be an implementation of package management and
dependency resolution for Windows (similar to dpkg+apt, or
rpm+apt/urpmi/yum, etc.). On the site you can find an executive
summary, and the beginning of the design document.

I'd like to brain storm about this idea, and that people (after
reading the documents) tell me what issues and obstacles those who
desire in accopmlishing such a task will face, and suggest possible
solutions.

While I am an experienced programmer, I am not a very experienced
Windows systems programmer. I did do some programming for Windows, but
it was mostly GUI or MFC or simple things like opening files. (many
times using the POSIX primitives).

I am sending this message here because some of you guys are Win32 experts.

Regards,

           Shlomi Fish

------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/

If his programming is anything like his philosophizing, he
would find 10 imaginary bugs in the "Hello World" program.

[Mike Hearn]

Well, this is all rather off-topic for wine-devel - Win32 experts
certainly do live here but you don't need Win32 experts for a project like
this.

That said, I think you should compare the number of people wishing Linux
has more Windows/Mac like package management vs the reverse before
porting the spectacular piece of brokenness known as apt to Windows. Do
that many people actually want it? I would guess not.

Remember that on Windows, the most popular programs aren't free anyway.
Also remember that Windows programs don't usually have dependencies
outside of the Win32 platform, making a tool like apt rather overkill. I
suspect what you actually want is just a software catalogue or somesuch,
but you can do that using a web page just as easily as a program ...

If you really want to go ahead I'd recommend something like Delphi or
Visual Basic as a developer tool - raw C/C++ coding against Win32 is
really quite nasty.

thanks -mike