If you are going to do something like this, it should be in dispatch style.

When I install gui software, I want a small installer. I run it and it realizes I'm running distro x on architecture y, which uses rpms. Therefore, it pulls the rpms off of a web site, does dependency checking and so forth. My software is installed and I'm happy.

It should be able to work on and linux, *bsd, macos*, win*. Yes, I said win*, new versions of windows use MSI packages.

My requirements in an installer for opensource (or closed, I suppose) would be the following:

• Cross platform/architecture
• Web enabled (only download the installer first)
• Only knows how to detect the operating system/platform and how to download the correct files.

Every platform is going to use packaging systems and locations for files. I wouldn't try to fight that but keep packages for all these different systems around.