The solution to library hell is to use packages for your distribution
from the distributor or a third party. Debian users can "apt-get install
pcb" and get a working installation guaranteed.
That's fine for Debian, but what about SuSE, Red Hat, AIX, Solaris, Slackware, HPuX, Tru64, Mandrake, BSD, and so on?
having discovered the ease of using apt-get on fedora, this argument has holes in it.
apt is a fedora extra, but yum is in the base package and appears to achieve the same thing. I reckon apt is a valid solution.
Suppose you are a clueless newbie. All you want to do is design a
board. You've never heard of apt-get, nor of yum. You don't know
what Qt is, nor do you know what GTK is. You *are* smart, and have
some basic inking about how to use unix, and have managed to install
FC using the installer. HOwever, that's as much Linux hacking as you
really want to do.
sure. so expecting the distribution to have an installer that can do dependencies,
expecting the user to be able to do the graphical click equivilant of typing apt-get install geda
and hoping the geda developers have made such a good package that the distribution package porters can suoort the above
is a good way to achieve this? and then keep it current.
Do yourself a favour and play with apt. Debian made a really good tool, many other distributions have noticed and port/support it.
regards, john
Now you try to install gEDA & PCB from the current CD ROM. It turns out you need to have the GTK developemnt libs. Bad news. But you go out and install it. Then, the CD runs and you can begin designing.
Now imagine what would happen if your installation fails again, this
time because you need Qt. What's Qt?!? You go to geda-user and ask.
"It's another GUI library, different from GTK." To get it they say
"use apt-get". What's that, you wonder? In any event, you try it
out, but it turns out you don't have "apt-get" on your box either --
it's an FC add-in.
So what do you do next? You install Eagle.
That's why I cannot stress enough how important it is to forget your
whiz-bang technological solutions and focus on the user experience
instead.
Stuart
