why use installers

[Impostor]

Why use installers?

Quite often I download a plugin or a standalone program, which is bundled in or packed with an installer, while just extracting and dropping the files somewhere seems to work just fine.

Examples: for most plugins I just need to drop /plugin.lv2 or plugin.so into my relevant plugins folder and they work. Standalones like Pianoteq or Renoise also work just fine by just dropping their files somewhere.

What's the benefit, if any, of using an installer? What would I gain with installing a .deb or running an install.sh, as opposed to extracting and/or choosing a suitable location myself?

[LAM]

Why use installers?

Quite often I download a plugin or a standalone program, which is bundled in or packed with an installer, while just extracting and dropping the files somewhere seems to work just fine.

Examples: for most plugins I just need to drop /plugin.lv2 or plugin.so into my relevant plugins folder and they work. Standalones like Pianoteq or Renoise also work just fine by just dropping their files somewhere.

What's the benefit, if any, of using an installer? What would I gain with installing a .deb or running an install.sh, as opposed to extracting and/or choosing a suitable location myself?

While dropping the .so file or the entire binary folder in your plugin directories will work 9 times out of 10, still there are sometimes plugins requiring some additional resources installed in different locations (see Cardinal for example).

[tramp]

What's the benefit, if any, of using an installer? What would I gain with installing a .deb or running an install.sh, as opposed to extracting and/or choosing a suitable location myself?

Installer scripts ensure that all files going into the expected directory. True, for a plug (be it LV2 or VST, there is not much which could go wrong by copy and paste, just, isn't it more comfortable to just enter a small command on the command-line?
deb packages have the additional advance that the package manager keeps track of your installation and could warn you if something is missing or try to overwrite were it shouldn't.

[Impostor]

isn't it more comfortable to just enter a small command on the command-line?

Well, no: now and then I do a system restore, and not having to keep track of the plugins/programs I've manually installed or deleted since the last snapshot makes that much less of a pain. Whatever I've done in my home folder won't be undone by a system restore.

deb packages have the additional advance that the package manager keeps track of your installation and could warn you if something is missing

Good point.

[tramp]

Well, no: now and then I do a system restore, and not having to keep track of the plugins/programs I've manually installed or deleted since the last snapshot makes that much less of a pain. Whatever I've done in my home folder won't be undone by a system restore.

when the installer allow you to run as user (not as root) it is likely that it will install in your home folder. Nearly all plugs I've done allow that.

[Linuxmusician01]

Why use installers?

Quite often I download a plugin or a standalone program, which is bundled in or packed with an installer, while just extracting and dropping the files somewhere seems to work just fine.

Examples: for most plugins I just need to drop /plugin.lv2 or plugin.so into my relevant plugins folder and they work. Standalones like Pianoteq or Renoise also work just fine by just dropping their files somewhere.

What's the benefit, if any, of using an installer? What would I gain with installing a .deb or running an install.sh, as opposed to extracting and/or choosing a suitable location myself?

In my experience, if they require an installer they're bloated. I avoid plugins w/ an installer like the plague.

[nils]

I just install plugins and program through my package manager.

[tramp]

In my experience, if they require an installer they're bloated. I avoid plugins w/ an installer like the plague.

So a simple 'make install' isn't a installer for you?

[jean-emmanuel]

Using the system's package manager is the best way to have some control over what's installed in your system, to avoid version conflicts, to ensure compatibility between you packages and have some consistency as to where things are stored...in short, to avoid your OS to end up bloated like any windows does at some point. It's not perfect but it's safer. Here's what I usually do, in order of preference :

• install from package manager
• if not available (or not in desired version), build from sources, make a .deb package out of it and install it
• if I really don't want to compile myself and a .deb package is provided by a trustworthy vendor, I take my chances with that .deb package (spoiler alert: it's not safe)
• in case it's a plugin and if none of the above is possible, I drop the plugin in ~/.lv2 (aka black hole)

[WforWoollyMammoth]

Why use installers?

Quite often I download a plugin or a standalone program, which is bundled in or packed with an installer, while just extracting and dropping the files somewhere seems to work just fine.

Examples: for most plugins I just need to drop /plugin.lv2 or plugin.so into my relevant plugins folder and they work. Standalones like Pianoteq or Renoise also work just fine by just dropping their files somewhere.

What's the benefit, if any, of using an installer? What would I gain with installing a .deb or running an install.sh, as opposed to extracting and/or choosing a suitable location myself?

While dropping the .so file or the entire binary folder in your plugin directories will work 9 times out of 10, still there are sometimes plugins requiring some additional resources installed in different locations (see Cardinal for example).

I'd say dropping the .so file or the binary folder in the plugin directories will work 999 times out of 1000.

[Loki Harfagr]

Why use installers?

Quite often I download a plugin or a standalone program, which is bundled in or packed with an installer, while just extracting and dropping the files somewhere seems to work just fine.

Examples: for most plugins I just need to drop /plugin.lv2 or plugin.so into my relevant plugins folder and they work. Standalones like Pianoteq or Renoise also work just fine by just dropping their files somewhere.

What's the benefit, if any, of using an installer? What would I gain with installing a .deb or running an install.sh, as opposed to extracting and/or choosing a suitable location myself?

While dropping the .so file or the entire binary folder in your plugin directories will work 9 times out of 10, still there are sometimes plugins requiring some additional resources installed in different locations (see Cardinal for example).

I'd say dropping the .so file or the binary folder in the plugin directories will work 999 times out of 1000.

Though, the fan is quite an oft severely overdamaged on these dreamworld once per thousand case that'll generate thousands of hate or moronic and undocumented messages over several innocent fora

[Impostor]

Using the system's package manager is the best way to [..] have some consistency as to where things are stored...

If only! It was already bad on windows, but on linux I find the distribution of files pertaining to a single program, both throughout the main / filesystem and in the clutterf*ck my home ~/ folder has become, an absolute mess. I think there is a standard which should be adhered to, but it seems there are also variations on these rules. (Lately I have lots of symlinks in root in an attempt of my distribution to clean this mess up, sort of.)

Not to mention lots of programs and plugins just seem to do their own thing, creating folders and files everywhere they like throughout /home willy-nilly, according to their own incomprehensible logic. (Though that has nothing to do with installers.)

Fun fact: I have a vitalium plugin. Every time I start MusE, regardless of whether I open a project involving vitalium, a folder /.vitalium is created in my main home dir. That folder contains a single file: vitalium.config. That file contains a single line: {"synth_version":"1.0.6"}. Really???? This line requires its own file in its own folder in my main home directory??

[Impostor]

I'd say dropping the .so file or the binary folder in the plugin directories will work 999 times out of 1000.

Calf, Zyn, Amsynth, Helm don't work that way for me. And I don't have 4000 plugins :)

And Carla 2.5.3 neither...

[LAM]

Fun fact: I have a vitalium plugin. Every time I start MusE, regardless of whether I open a project involving vitalium, a folder /.vitalium is created in my main home dir. That folder contains a single file: vitalium.config. That file contains a single line: {"synth_version":"1.0.6"}. Really???? This line requires its own file in its own folder in my main home directory??

That's because that folder is intended to contain things like user presets, wavetables, env/lfo shapes etc. The same thing happens with SurgeXT (in ~/Documents/Surge XT), Odin2 (~/.local/share/odin2/) and so on with several other plugins.

I use a folder where I move all these plugins folders and create symlinks to their original location to keep them at least a bit organized.

[Impostor]

That's because that folder is intended to contain things like user presets, wavetables, env/lfo shapes etc.

A ~/.local/share/vitalium folder is also created for that purpose. If they are dead set in creating a separate config file just to display the version number (?) and keep it apart from other user data, they should've used a folder inside ~/.config at least.

But I do the same as you: I move everything (well, almost) related to music into a ~/Music folder, with symlinks at the original locations. Still a mess though, all those symlinks.