Re: gEDA-user: Greetings! I am new here

[Al Davis <ad82@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wednesday 23 November 2005 10:12 am, Stuart Brorson wrote:
>  The majority of complaints I see
> about gEDA these days come from people who have
> consumer-grade distros installed on their machines (SuSE 9.X
> personal, Fedora desktop, Ubuntu, etc.).   The consumer-grade
> distros often leave off important header files and utilities
> used when compiling programs such as gEDA. Some even leave
> off gcc!

Some even leave off gEDA!!!

Seriously ...  All of them make decisions about what goes in the 
default install based on their focus.  The style that I like 
best is where you get a minimal system by default, then install 
what you want.   (Some even leave off X!!!)  It's not a bug, 
it's a feature.

If you see a distribution that leaves off gcc, of course you 
should avoid it, but first make sure that it really does leave 
it out. If it is offered as an option, or you can get it if you 
ask, that is reasonable.  Do any distributions really leave out 
gcc?????

I suppose if you are really serious about development, you 
should consider a source based distribution.  I am thinking of 
switching to a source based distribution.

The problems I ran into with the old gEDA CD were not related to 
stuff left out of the distribution.  In most cases, I had a 
more recent version than required, but it didn't accept it.

The fault lies with all of us developers, myself included.  It 
is too easy to use undocumented "features" of a language, and 
we all do without realizing it.  We do it a certain way and it 
works.  Then the new compiler comes out and my code breaks.  I 
admit that it is my code that is at fault.  The new compiler is 
only enforcing the rules that the old one didn't.

Autoconf really makes things worse.  It hides problems without 
fixing them, then you get hit harder later.  When autoconf 
can't take care of an issue, it usually gets in the way, making 
it harder than it should be.  Unfortunately, we are stuck with 
it for now.  Maybe someday someone will come up with a better 
way, and package it so everyone can use it.