[Xastir-Dev] Re-org of file releases?

[David L Norris]

Just some thoughts...

On Wed, 2002-10-30 at 15:23, Jack Twilley wrote:
> My vote is to pull the binary.  The Linux crowd should be able to
> handle building its own binaries from scratch, and it minimizes
> support issues tremendously.

I know at least a dozen people (including hams) using Linux who haven't
a clue how to use a terminal let alone how to use tar to extract the
source.  I spent 5 hours the other night trying to walk someone through
building a simple program from a source tarball; he eventually gave up. 
People coming from DOS who do know how to use a command line often have
so many horrible "do what I mean not do what I say" habits that it's
hard to even explain how to type a command with parameters.  If it isn't
RPM or DEB they are mostly lost.

And, preinstalled Linux systems such as those sold by Walmart,
TigerDirect, etc (for ~$200) have no build environment.  It's either
.deb, .rpm or bust unless they know how, where and which packages to
install to get a build environment.  It seems to me like there should be
some way to get packages out for these people.  Their vendors probably
aren't going to help them much.

Maybe a few people running different distributions could contribute
binary packages for official releases of XASTIR.  I know I'd be willing
to do something like that.  Granted, this would be an extra burden. 
And, only worthwhile if several people are willing to (reliably)
contribute binaries of the releases.

> Otherwise, you should consider making
> .rpm's and .deb's, and madness lies down that path.

I really like having the option of using RPMs.  Even when building from
source I'll always create my own RPM when there's a spec file.  It makes
it easy to see what's installed, where it's installed, and what it needs
to work correctly.  And, once the RPM is built all I have to do is click
an icon to install it on all my other machines.  I can even give it to a
friend and not have to spend 5 hours on the phone with him.  :-)

Perhaps a compromise for RPM-based systems is to provide source RPMs via
SourceForge.  It should be fairly simple even for newbies to build a
source RPM.  "rpmbuild --rebuild xastir.src.rpm"  Building RPMs from the
spec file is a slightly more involved but not complex at all; extract
spec file, copy tarball to the RPM SOURCES directory, "rpmbuild -ba
someprog.spec".  But, both require build environments which, these days,
are not always installed on "default" Linux desktop systems.  Why, I
have no clue.  But, that's the way things are going lately.

-- 
 David Norris
  Dave's Web - http://www.webaugur.com/dave/
  Augury Net - http://home.webaugur.com/
  ICQ - 412039