On Tue, 2013-08-27 at 16:35 +0100, Tom Davies wrote: > Hi :) > I thought that was one of the myths about Gnu&Linux. > > Several times i have seen people saying that packages in Gnu&Linux > need a separate new compile for each individual distro. However all > the links i gave to other projects show only 2-3 downloads and that > seems to be enough to cover almost all versions of almost all > distros.
There are soft lines and hard lines in package deployment. When a distribution makes a major change, like version of GCC, or glibc, or a common dependency changes - a package may need to be recompiled. But generally the dynamic linker allows a binary to run across a swath of minor versions [of a dependency]. Path and naming conventions are generally the reason you need a distribution specific package - and that is no small thing. It can control if an install applications shows up on a menu, etc... which is a real usability issue - and something self-hosted one-off download binaries almost always lack. > I hadn't realised that Evo is slightly different and more tightly > integrated with just 1 version of just 1 DE. So although it's not > quite possible with Evo it does seem to be fine with the others. It works very well in a FreeDesktop environment [KDE or GNOME or like]. It will not work so well elsewhere; it uses D-Bus services and other DE services to provide the awesome sauce [which other like applications cannot]. > So for a Gnu&Linux app to hit the vast majority of users it just needs > to be compiled about 3 times. Or far more often; it depends. But build services exist to do this. I can publish a package on OBS [openSUSE build service] and get packages for openSUSE, Ubuntu, CentOS, etc... Much of this is automated away [for someone who chooses to use the tools, if they don't, oh well]. -- Adam Tauno Williams <mailto:[email protected]> GPG D95ED383 Systems Administrator, Python Developer, LPI / NCLA _______________________________________________ evolution-list mailing list [email protected] To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list
