Welcome
Welcome to the CerbeRun Project home page. Here you will find all info about the .run format
and about his runner, CerbeRun.
The project was born in April 2006 with the purpose of creating an application distribution system
completely user-side and desktop-oriented.
News:
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Si cercano traduttori
[18/04/2006 14:50]Cerchiamo traduttori per il sito, Principalmente per la traduzione da Italiano ad Inglese, ma se vi fossero volontari anche per la traduzione in altre lingue sarebbe una cosa ben gradita.
Grazie (0 comments) -
Si parte
[17/04/2006 00:30]HELLO WORLD !!!
Prende vita ufficialmente il progetto CerbeRun ed il formato .run :) (0 comments)
What is CerbeRun
CerbeRun is a software able to parse .run files, then to execute them.
This application is designed to make easier the use of Linux desktop computers for normal user, that is not forced
to switch to root user in order to execute new applications.
The main concept on which CerbeRun and the .run format are based is:
- download
- double-click
- execution and enjoying
All is performed comfortably and with user grants only .
Users from other systems are accustomed to download software and save it on supports,
to be executed later or to be shared with friends. At present, it is not so easy (some times impossible) to save
& distribute packages with .DEB or .RPM formats or other user-side formats (klik, 0install, packages), as in Mac or Windows systems.
CerbeRun and .run format, instead, merge the advantages of two above mentioned systems, because Windows .exe are single files to be executed, while Macintosh .app files can be installed and executed
after a drag'n'drop, without a real installation step.
What is the .run format
The .run format (based on the tar format, but the version 0.3 will use the ISO9660 format ) is born togheter with this project, and allows to share smoothly the software to
be executed by user, without to install it on the system.
The .run format is not meant to be a replacement of package systems, but just to be placed side by side with them,
in order to make easier to provide applications beyond distribution repositories, and to make easier the the application use to desktop user.
Classical package systems (.DEB o .RPM), and software to manage them are excelent tools for updating application and utilities provided with distributions.
The .run format is meant to allow sharing and use of applications in a parallel way with classical package systems but on user-side only.
The .run format includes some embedded xml "instructions" allowing many features, in particular the most interesting one, the auto-architecture-switching feature.
This feature allows to download a single file for all distributions and all architectures.
Moreover, the .run format allows to create working software packages without to modify the current application source code by just using the --prefix option.
The .run format allows to join the icon to the file, so when in the future desktop managers will support that format, it will be possible to
have an icon associated and embedded into the .run file itself.
In a single .run file is possible to include more binary files, running only selected ones by suitable command line option. This can be useful
for packages including more than one single binary file, i.e. Inkscape, that includes both program itself and the SVG visualizer.
