Zero Install allows installing software easily and without the need for root privileges. It takes the URL of a program and chooses suitable versions of the program and all of its dependencies (also identified by URLs) according to the user's policy settings (eg. "stable", "testing", "minimal network use", etc). The chosen versions are downloaded and cached and the program is run, using environment variables to let it find the components.
| Tags | Archiving Packaging Internet Software Distribution Tools Software Distribution |
|---|---|
| Licenses | LGPL |
| Operating Systems | POSIX Linux Mac OS X Windows |
| Implementation | Python |
| Translations | English Swedish Spanish |
Recent releases


Release Notes: A new "Explain this decision" feature lets you find out why a particular version isn't being selected. There is a new "POSIX" architecture group for implementations which work everywhere except on Windows. The certifi library can be used to provide the trusted CA list on platforms without a system list. Connections are now queued to avoid overloading sites with too many at once. The user's preferred terminal emulator is now used, instead of hard-coding xterm.


Release Notes: Support for native Cygwin packages has been added. Updating now warns if the package has been replaced by another one. PackageKit support has been updated to work with Ubuntu's version.


Release Notes: Arch Linux native packages can now be used as dependencies. "0install update" informs the user if a newer version exists but was not selected for some reason. A workaround was added for Python's lack of SSL hostname checking. Various minor bugs were fixed.


Release Notes: A progress indicator was added for 0store optimize. Native Java JREs and JDKs are now detected on Windows. Various minor bugs were fixed.


Release Notes: Support for MacPorts was added, so that packages installed this way can be used as dependencies. A number of minor bugs were fixed, including support for detecting multiple versions of a native package (e.g. for multi-arch systems) and batching PackageKit requests to avoid the transaction size limit.
A library for reading and writing legacy, fixed width, and delimited flat files.