I need to distribute a small binary application to a limited number (around 20) of known users.
The installation process needs to be as simple & user friendly as possible. Ideally it is a single entry on the command line which downloads the binary & installs it.
Also important:
- Binary is a single file, no external dependencies.
- Binary needs to hook itself into the startup process via init.d.
- Target distro is the same for all users (Debian).
I am thinking along the line, to provide a single command to the users, i.e. something like this:
To install the app, please run this from the command line:
wget https://myapp.com/binary.tgz; tar xvfz binary.tgz; sudo install.sh
Are there more appropiate / simpler solutions I should be aware of?
(Of course sudo somethingFromTheInternet is a security issue for a "real" distribution. However all my users are well known (+know me), and the number of users is very limited (around 20). So I am willing to trade ease of installation for security in this case)
Are the users ON your network? Do you control the servers/workstations that the users will be using?
The right choice for your distro would be to package it (deb for packaging, apt for distribution). That allow you to wrap some logic around the installation - executable permissions, sanity checks, init scripts, maybe even an opportunity to uninstall.