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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Why isn't there a cross-distro system the auto-builds Linux apps from source yet? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 4 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Basically, the AUR works by downloading source code and running a build script that builds the app specifically for an Arch system, right? So why isn't there an equivalent that works on most or all distros? Almost every time, compiling a Linux app is just running the commands that the developer tells you to, and for the uncommon times there are distro-specific differences, they're usually listed in the README. For many userspace apps, even building across different processor architectures requires little to no change in the commands required as long as there's a platform specific compiler. Why isn't there a cross-distro system that can download source code and run a build script while knowing what distro-specific commands to use based on the developer's instructions? Heck, compiling an app on the system you plan on running it on can unlock a little more performance by taking advantage of compiler optimizations for that specific processor, and it doesn't take that long on a reasonably modern computer anyway, so why isn't there an incentive to do it more often?

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 years ago

right. on top of package manager support there would need to be more rigid standardization of package names. I have run into dependency libraries with differing names across different package managers even though they are the same code so it's not as simple as dropping in apt install/pacman -S/emerge