Re: gEDA-user: strange build failure

[Dan McMahill <dan@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Adrian Nania wrote:
> I do believe for more than 98% of people working with electronic
> components it is not possible to install and use the latest gEDA
> version. The endless compiling errors and flavor dependencies are
> unbelievable. Yeah, we can always google around and after many hard
> working weeks have an installation method working for just a few days
> before some "justified" changes in name or settings.

I have two comments about this.

1)  I do think it would probably make sense to create a more unified top 
level build and top level distfile for gEDA.  While there may be some 
users who want to install gschem for schematics and only want to use it 
for postscript output, most people probably want to install the entire 
suite.  A single

  ./configure --prefix=/opt/geda-2006xxyy
  make
  make install

would be useful.  If others agree I can probably create a top level 
configure script and Makefile.am.  I suspect this would make many of the 
problems go away.

2)  I have to blame a lot of the problems on packaging systems used by 
the various OS vendors.  For example, it is always as easy to install 
the latest geda on NetBSD as any other software because you just do (cd 
/usr/pkgsrc/cad/geda && make install).  No doubt about it though, it can 
be a pain.



> On the other hand, many times we do not have access to a Linux box.
> Windows is unfortunately or not the single available desktop in many
> places. Now, I do not believe Windows users are jerks. Usually they are
> forced to use Windows.

geda, I believe, works alright on cygwin.  To create a non-cygwin 
version certainly requires dealing with guile but also you still need to 
have a shell available.  gnetlist is a command line utility as are 
several of the other components.

> I've had the "make the Windows port available" discussion many many
> times (both virtually and in person).  Just this last week I was talking
> to another OSS developer (for a totally different program and
> *significantly* (100x to 1000x) larger user base) and he stated that the
> moment they released a Windows binary: the whining, the complaining,
> cluelessness, and general jerk behavior increased *a lot*.

I wonder how much this was coupled to them being windows users vs it 
just being a big increase in the total number of users.  I suspect with 
geda there would be a lot of the former because the suite is not a fully 
integrated, do everything only via the mouse, sort of tool.

I'm not opposed in general to doing things which help in terms of 
software working on cygwin or mingw but at the same time it is hard to 
get too motivated on that front.  After all, this is a hobby for me and 
I will probably *never* run the windows version of any of this myself.

-Dan



_______________________________________________
geda-user mailing list
geda-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user