Re: gEDA: Some suggestions

[Igor Izyumin <igor-at-NOSPAMmlug_dot_missouri_dot_edu>]

Karel Kulhavy wrote:

>You can make Slackware system be compliant the same way as you do any other
>system - download, compile, install.
>  
>
If the distribution in question uses RPM, installing libraries manually 
into system directories will screw it up.  RPM will not know that the 
library is already installed, so it will try to overwrite it when the 
user installs some other package that requires it also.  This causes a 
general mess.  One way to avoid this problem is to install everything 
into some other directory, but then it will require setting up paths -- 
and the user still has to download several libraries, compile them, 
install them, and hope everything works.  This is difficult, 
error-prone, and time-consuming.

In my opinion, the best way to simplify installation would be to provide 
static binaries and/or binary packages for a few popular distributions.  
For example, Mozilla provides mostly-static binaries, and the 
installation could not be simpler -- all the user has to do is extract 
the .tar.gz into some convenient directory and run the program.  The 
only dependency they have is GTK+, and that is pre-installed on just 
about every distribution.

-- Igor