[Xastir] xastir install stalls

[Curt, WE7U]

On Sat, 14 May 2005, Andrew Rich wrote:

> each time I did a configure, make, and then did not get far enough to make
> install.
>
> again it is a real stab and fumble type install.
>
> no real difinitave dependancies.

Two comments:

1) If you want Xastir back into SuSE, write them and tell them so.
I sent some supporting links to the guy who does the ham radio
portions of SuSE to attempt to educate him about the licensing.
Seems he thought one of our modules had a GPL-incompatible license.

Anyway... If SuSE can support an Xastir RPM in the distribution from
now on, then people running that distribution won't have to go
through the headaches of compiling from sources.

2) Xastir supports so many different operating systems, variants of
same, and libraries, that it would be nearly impossible to come up
with a configure script that covered all possibilities, or libraries
that installed properly which we could then use without a hitch.
ImageMagick was mentioned as a particular troublemaker, and I have
to agree, in that they have messed up the version number on us,
changed the API on us (actually did both at the same time so we
couldn't easily change the API in our code based on the version
number), had magick-config scripts that didn't report all
dependences, had incorrect spec files in the distributions so that
dependencies didn't get installed when you installed ImageMagick
itself.  That last one has been happening all the way to the
present, and it means often that the installed libraries work fine
with pre-compiled apps, but compiling anything new with ImageMagick
will break because other libraries are not installed (like zlib,
etc).

If we were to try to fix all of these, we'd make nearly zero
progress with Xastir itself in terms of new features or bug-fixes.
We're darned close to that now anyway.

Sorry,

--
Curt, WE7U.   APRS Client Comparisons: http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
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