Rust's simple download script

[Matt Soucy via Digitalmars-d]

On 11/10/2015 08:12 AM, Márcio Martins wrote:
> On Monday, 9 November 2015 at 23:07:57 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> Rust has a nice way to download at https://www.rust-lang.org/downloads.html for Posix:
>>
>> $ curl -sSf https://static.rust-lang.org/rustup.sh | sh -s --
>>
>> The method is simple and transparent. An optional --channel=beta or --channel=nightly parameter chooses between a stable release (default), beta, or nightly build.
>>
>> Should we do something similar?
>>
>>
>> Andrei
> 
> I also think curl | sh is bad, but the idea to have a quick no-brain "just works" installation is great. One good step would be providing packages for all major distros and providing a wget | pkginstall command which effectively does the same thing: wget DMD.deb && dpkg -i DMD.deb for Debian/Ubuntu
> 
> For example, newbies to Ubuntu might not even know what dpkg is so they will not know what to do with a .deb file since their world consists of apt-get mostly. Many people also don't know what x86 or x86_AMD64 stand for so yet another doubt in a potential downloaders mind.
> 
> Could then combine this with OS detection through user-agent on the website and show the user the most likely option and command-line suggestion.
> 
> Another thing I would do is not show LDC and GDC in the front page but have a "other options" sort of thing. People are afraid to fail and each decision is a potential failure that will scare new people off. The idea is that people that already use D know where to find the other compilers and more importantly what they are, but someone that does not use D might get intimidated by too many choices they don't have the knowledge to make confidently.
> 
> If in doubt, A/B test it. :)

Debian-based systems have d-apt, though it's hosted on SourceForge, which is (IMO) rather sketchy as of late. It's quite easy to create something similar for RPM-based repositories - I set one up on my local server, if I get some blessing I can post it here or work with others to get it migrated to a more official D server. (Preferably soon, I'll lose access to my wonderful upload speeds in a few months). I actually don't even install the RPM directly anymore, I update the repository on my server then just run `sudo dnf update` like I would for any other update.
This doesn't handle every distro and OS, but it can help if we get things more convenient to install.

-- 
Matt Soucy
http://msoucy.me/

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