Dear All, I have been very frustrated multiple times by the mess of the win32 build environment, and I have to say that it is time to make some improvements here.
I also belive that the team also are going to have to review their responsibilities as developers when releasing Executables under the G PL. I have been testing dia 0.90 uml under windows. DIA has a lot of potential, and have not given up on using it (yet). I still have gotten *no* answers from my requests for help compiling under windows32. This is my last try before going crazy! It cannot be that you are distributing the executables, but not the source code that can be used to build it. That is completly against the GNU license! If there are a set of files and changes that are needed, please make them available. If modules are needed, you have to say where they are from and what patches are options are used to compile them. That Is dictated by the GPL. All I can find are broken links and people saying how little time they have to help. If you read the GPL [1] >>3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, >>under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of >>Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the >>following: >>a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable >>source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 >>and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; >>or, The source code for the win32 is not being distributed in whole, if all types of changes need to be made, or if the compilable source code is not made available. Here is another quote from [1] >>The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for >>making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source >>code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any >>associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to >>control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a >>special exception, the source code distributed need not include >>anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary >>form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the >>operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component >>itself accompanies the executable. So all the GNOME libs that are needed, which are not part of the standard system, need to be made available. If you put the work to compile them and maybe even had to modify the makefiles or such, then you have to make those changes available under the GPL. You might say that it is my problem to get all this put together, but the "source" code includes all these parts. Hans web page says here [2]: >>I'm using MSVC 5.0 command line compiler as development environment. >>All the win32 make and other files should be available in gnome cvs. >>If not it would be a bug of mine. But be warned: Dia on win32 is not >>yet ready to be build by everyone. >>There is almost no explanation on how to compile it and the stuff may >>even not be complete or up to date. BTW: the sources of released >>officially versions are here. >>BTW: If you don't understand what I'm talking about, you should >>probably NOT even use DIA at the moment, because my spare time does >>not permit to explain how computers do work ... Well if you distribute the executables, then it is your duty to make the stuff complete and up to date. You cannot just put that on to me to do. Is there anyone who compiles this under windows? Is it possible that you make some of this available? I think that is it not fair to keep this all to yourselves, that is not part of the spirit of the GNU software. If you distribute binaries, you have to make the sources available. Saying that you cannot be bothered, and don't have time to talk to beginners is not enough! I have spent over 2 evenings, and 12 hours trying to get a set of dlls and headers for the windows compilation together. I find it almost impossible. Just getting the prerequisite dlls, lib and header versions together is a nightmare! Many of the DLLS and programs available are not compatible, I would like to build it all from source. But there does not seem to be any way to get all the right versions together. Would someone be kind enough to upload a snapshot of the environment for compiling dia under windows? I would volunteer to make it into something that is easier to use! Maybe a list of the versions of the dlls that are needed, where they can be gotten from? The next point is the UML sequence diagram : There does not seem to be a way to add activations to an UML object lifetime. Also the inheritance lines are hard to format, if you have lots of subclasses, the arrowheads look funny, one pointing down, one pointing up. it would nice to be able to make them point into the base class... Any ideas? Sorry to be such a complainer, but my nice requests have been ignored. It is time that we make the win32 more publically available, and that more openness comes into this project. Best regards, Mike References [1] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html [2] http://hans.breuer.org/dia/default.htm ===== James Michael DuPont http://introspector.sourceforge.net/ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs http://www.hotjobs.com _______________________________________________ Dia-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
