Are Installers Dead?(exasol.com)

https://www.exasol.com/blog/are-installers-dead/

5 comments

Installation of software has usually become simple and easy enough that I feel more safe if i just look it up on the official source and run some curl or package manager command to get it installed. I trust that more than letting an LLM figure it out and then having to worry that I it got hijackeed and installs something based on out-dated or wrong info.

But configuring / setting up complex pieces of technology is something in which I let LLMs help me regularly. I'm happy that I don't have to RTFM that much anymore to get something done. And yes, I'd hate to figure out IAM policies myself or decipher a truckload of error message of third-party systems by myself.

So, yes, I expect LLM help with these kind of things is going to become the norm.

For an LLM to work well, the installer should still exist, the UX should also be kind of self-explanatory and the error message must also have relevant and clear info.

So in that regard, not much has changed.

glad_it_worked2 mesi fa

Installers should be long dead. We've had proper package managers for decades now (any Linux / BSD distribution, homebrew, etc.). Some call the infrastructure "marketplace", but that's still just a repo and a package manager.

The important part in my eyes are signed packages. Curl on a random website is too dangerous for my taste. Sure, a signature does not mean the software is not malicious. But it at least is a proof of that it comes from who it claims to come.

Curl on a random URL without signature check is a recipe for trouble.

general14652 mesi fa

> Installers should be long dead.

Try to figure out how your package manager installs missing drivers - One of the things which Microsoft screwed up on Microsoft Store and MSIX packages. You literally can't touch PowerShell to install INF driver using PnP utility. You have to have executable installer.

Farooqui42 mesi fa

This is pretty cool. I remember not that long ago I was trying to install a plugin whose docs were very complicated and the UI was not very intuitive to look at. After doing some blatant tries. I just gave up and gave the whole repo to my agent and told it to make this work for me. In a couple of minutes I had a that plugin working for me. I don't know what it did and honestly I don't wanna know :D Let us all get AGI-pilled and bury any kind of manual work.

anotheric2 mesi fa

I know a lot of admins who would love not reading any docs, they'd love this