I'm aware of the script for apt, actually, precisely because I needed to do this once. That's a hack though, apt clearly wasn't built with the idea that anyone might ever want to do something with packages other than install them on their local system.
It's fine that Haiku's goals and mine don't align, really it is. I'm just not going to go out of my way to use it because I don't feel it offers advantages that outweigh the disadvantages.
There's also this artificial distinction between the uninstalled and the installed form of the same software. Once you have installed it, it is married into a system that makes it very hard to get it out of the running system again and transfer it to another system (unless you kept the debs or hope that they are still online in some repo).
A better system is one in which the archive/installer and the installed instance of a software is one and the same. Such as a Mac .app bundle or an AppImage for Linux.
"It wasn't built with the idea", but yet you can do that, because of the UNIX philosophy of chaining commands together. So I think if you're calling it a "hack", then you fundamentally disagree with the UNIX philosophy.
I mean, I have my issues with it, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that kind of command chaining is a "hack".
> "It wasn't built with the idea", but yet you can do that, because of the UNIX philosophy of chaining commands together. So I think if you're calling it a "hack", then you fundamentally disagree with the UNIX philosophy.
I disagree with the fact that the unix philosophy hasn't been updated since the 70s and text parsing is still considered the height of chianing applications together. I call it a hack because that's exactly what it is.
It's fine that Haiku's goals and mine don't align, really it is. I'm just not going to go out of my way to use it because I don't feel it offers advantages that outweigh the disadvantages.