[Development] A deployment tool for Linux

[Richard Weickelt]

>> I, as a person, think that a "deployment tool for Linux" is
>> something that spits out packages in half a dozen "native"
>> distribution package formats.
> 
> Nope, that tool is called "package maintainer" :)

Blessed be those who have a "package maintainer". I don'ẗ think it's that
easy. If I would want to bring my software product into the official
distribution repositories, maybe and of course every open source project
should aim for it. But that's quite some effort and sometimes even
impossible. I would be interested to know how easy it is to release a
Qt-based application with a bleeding edge Qt version (or with a patched one)
to the official Debian repositories.

And if I had a proprietary product and want to make updating as convenient
as possible for my customers?

Nothing stops me from publishing a self-containing .deb, .rpm, .whatever on
my website. If there was a one stop shop tool that produces a collection
like this with very little effort: https://speedcrunch.org/download.html I
would be sold. Maybe even in combination with setting up my own package
repos. But with very little manpower that can be cumbersome.

>> Collecting "resources that the application uses (like [...]
>> graphics, [...]" *and dependencies* would be a (important)
>> step, but not all that it takes.
> 
> By this logic windeployqt should produce .msi packages

Wouldn't be the worst feature though, would it. That doesn't make Andre's
comment less valid.

Richard