# ThirdPartyInstallers

This is a collection of utilities to handle the installation of packages in
non-native formats such as RPM and DEB.

Packages are unpacked under `/Programs`. The contents of `/opt`, when present,
are flattened under the new program entry and compatibility symlinks are created
at `/opt` pointing back to the new entry at `/Programs`.

# Caveats

Note that running packages built for other distributions is a best-effort task.
There are many features that won't work out of the box and that are outside the
scope of `ThirdPartyInstallers`. For instance, init scripts, tasks files, and
reliance on other distro-specific components may preclude the installed package
from working as expected.

`ThirdPartyInstallers` should help you to install distro-agnostic packages such
as LibreOffice, self-contained packages, and packages that do have many fancy
dependencies. It will **not** work with complex packages such as KDE.

If there is a GoboLinux recipe to build a program for which you have an RPM/DEB
file, please use the `Compile` tool instead of the `ThirdPartyInstallers`
utilities. We provide **zero** support for third-party packages.

# Prerequisites

This package requires `Dpkg` to decompress DEB files and `RPM` to handle RPM
files. You can install both binary packages on GoboLinux with `InstallPackage`
or build them from their sources with the `Compile` tool.

# Usage

Installing a single DEB file:

`$ ThirdPartyInstaller libfoo-2.1.3_amd64.deb`

Merging multiple RPMs under a single entry at `/Programs`:

`$ ThirdPartyInstaller --app-name "LibreOffice" --version-number 5.2.3.3 *.rpm`