Developing/Wrapping an unfree package/installer

Help
1

Hi there

I’d like to know if there are guidelines on this subject.

Specifically: i want to try the MPLabX compiler from Microchip, it is distributed in a tar file [1], when unpackaged, an sh script is presented, however, attempting to run it requires root privileges.

[hao@wendy:~/Downloads]$ ./MPLABX-v5.45-linux-installer.sh 
The installer needs to be run as root

Before doing that i’d like to know if there are any chances of breaking something, and then, if there is a way of wrapping it instead on a nix package instead of running the imperative install script.

I don’t know if the installer runs a graphical interface, im guessing that might be a problem to make a nix package?

So i perhaps i should check that first running in a virtual machine maybe, i’ll post what i find.

Any links/information is appreciated, thanks

[1] MPLAB® X IDE | Microchip Technology

2

Hi

If the install script requires one of these:

  • root permission (direct access to /etc/systemd, …)
  • network access
  • any user interaction

It will not be easy to package, usually in that situation I open the script to read what it does and try to mimic the behavior with packages and modules. Though it is a lot of work

(and I hate wizard scripts they have way too much assumptions on the filesystem/distribution/network access)