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Right now it's plain impossible to install official Lazarus releases on most Linux environments, unless you're using FPCUPDLX.
Sorry, thats plain silly.
I run a set of seven virtual and real machines to build and test my app before release. Yesterday, I decided I needed to use Lazarus 3.2 instead of 3.0 so, quick tweak of my bash script, installed Lazarus 3.2 on four quite different Linux systems in about 5 minutes each. They all had FPC323 snapshot and each worked as expected.
(My script grabs a local Lazarus source zip or, if necessary downloads one, puts it in an appropriate place, build lazarus, sets up a config dir, trivial !)
Again, it is exactly the same for Apple Silicon native macOS installations -
I don't have Apple Silicon hardware but have no problem building Lazarus on a intel based Mac and cross compiling.
I honestly can't see the harm in having a consistent installation process, with official support for AMD64 and aarch64 targets on both Linux and macOS. It'll only serve to make Lazarus more accessible for greater adoption. With Delphi just at #11 on this year's Tiobe index, the timing is really perfect for an upgrade of the installation (and by implication, the user experience).
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Help me understand how this is a bad thing?
Even within Linux, different binary install models are more or less compulsory. End users who want a binary install expect the familiar install model for their platform. Deb users want a deb, rpm users want an rpm, packman....
One single look and feel installer would be unfamiliar to every possible user. Its like saying we can make a car that runs on water, or a boat that runs on land, possible and has been done. But in both cases, they do a terrible job at everything !
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Davo