On Monday, 18 February 2013 at 13:42:49 UTC, Nick Sabalausky
wrote:
...
You are mixing together programmer needs and end-user needs. As
package manager takes care of dependencies, it naturally leaks as
a mandatory tool to use for someone who want to install your
application. And guess what? Those freaking ruby gems almost
never "just work" because of some forgotten requirements. I have
stumbled upon this just a week ago, trying to install Redmine on
Arch Linux : ImageMagick version in repo was too new and all
build/install system just died in pain with some obscure error.
Was forced to study rake file to tweak dependencies. A lot of
pain instead of just having clean full dependency list that I can
take care of myself and some generic widely adopted build system.
If you want to target specific OS or distro, you'll need learn a
good part about its design and environment anyway, at least to
adjust your code. If you have not done it, better not pretend
your software actually targets it and let enthusiasts take care
of it. I have done PKGBUILD's and .deb's so far and those are so
damn simple comparing to writing proper cross-platform code.
