People are raising some good concrete objections but I wonder if there isn’t the kernel of a good idea here.
Maybe GitHub should be offering additional services to better help pipe projects into all kinds of app distribution mechanisms. App stores, platform package managers (apt dnf ports homebrew), language package managers (gems pip maven CPAN npm etc), stand-alone installers (dmgs install exe-s), maybe even containers.
These services could form a layer with some autonomy from the underlying project — the author of the project rarely handles alll (or sometimes any) of the distro channels.
Anecdotally I feel like most of this stuff happens outside of GitHub, which is fine and actually good, but maybe there are things GitHub could do to smooth the process? To help the original authors arrange things in releases or set metadata in a way that’s useful downstream to packagers?
But some of it happens in projects already, sometimes for a desktop type app you’ll see a dmg or some other installer right in the project files. This could probably be more standardized.
> But some of it happens in projects already, sometimes for a desktop type app you’ll see a dmg or some other installer right in the project files. This could probably be more standardized.
I agree with your interpretation. GitHub already allows projects to publish release builds. They could provide a new search form that looks somewhat like an "app store" where you could search for ready-to-install packages.
Maybe GitHub should be offering additional services to better help pipe projects into all kinds of app distribution mechanisms. App stores, platform package managers (apt dnf ports homebrew), language package managers (gems pip maven CPAN npm etc), stand-alone installers (dmgs install exe-s), maybe even containers.
These services could form a layer with some autonomy from the underlying project — the author of the project rarely handles alll (or sometimes any) of the distro channels.
Anecdotally I feel like most of this stuff happens outside of GitHub, which is fine and actually good, but maybe there are things GitHub could do to smooth the process? To help the original authors arrange things in releases or set metadata in a way that’s useful downstream to packagers?
But some of it happens in projects already, sometimes for a desktop type app you’ll see a dmg or some other installer right in the project files. This could probably be more standardized.