> Stuart Brorson wrote: > > >As for installation, once Ales releases the next rev (coming very > >soon. . . .), I will put my install CD .iso onto geda.seul.org for > >folks to download. It automates the installation process with a > >Python-based GUI which manages the ./configure && make && make install > >process for all the usual tools (not just gEDA/gaf). > > > I'd say Gentoo Linux is the best at doing this kind of thing. We have > ebuilds written which work great to automate this stuff. > > By the way, who is the Python based GUI for? Shouldn't Linux users rely > on their distribution to make RPMs, debs, ebuilds, etc..?
The vision is to provide an easy-to-install suite of EDA tools for any and all Linux users. The target audience is real, practicing engineers who don't want to muck around with RPMs, debs, ebuilds, etc. The want an install medium which "just works" (TM). With the gEDA Suite install CD, you just stick the CD into your CD reader, and it automagically runs & installs teh entire gEDA Suite for you (gEDA/gaf, ngspice, PCB, etc.). Then you can begin designing without the need to be a Linux guru. BTW: The install Wizard is written in Python, but it is distributed as a "frozen", platform independent executable, so you don't need to worry about which version of Python you have on your machine (if any). The "freeze" facility of Python is one of it's many intelligent features. The installer is tested to verify that it runs on all modern Linux platforms. > Gentoo > certainly won't be using it. And I can't see Debian or Fedora using it > either since they are binary distros. Seems like the Python-based GUI is > for 0.1% of the Linux population. That's your opinion, which is fine. My view is that there are a lot of engineers out there who just want to design, and don't want to fool around with the difficulties of software installation. You might think that RPMs, debs, etc are easy enough. However, for the average user, they are not. Here are the comments of a potential gEDA user who was turned off by the install process: http://www.triode.net.au/~telford/news/2004/12/28/ My view is that people like this are the target audience of gEDA, if it becomes easy enough to install and use. Stuart
