On Monday 04 December 2006 19:26, Adrian Nania wrote: > It is possible for some good Samaritan to compile for windows > and make available all the updated gEDA packages?
To answer this, you must understand how the binary packages are made, and who does them. Speaking as the creator of gnucap, one of the tools ... I develop on a system I like, which may or may not be the same as anyone else has. We try to make the code as portable as possible, in hopes that it compiles anywhere but there are always surprises. None of us have a collection of different systems, or the patience to use them all. To do so, we do accept a certain set of tools as standard, which basically includes a shell, "make" and a set of compilers with a command line interface. Those who like a graphic environment make one by wrapping the tools. Some common ones include emacs and kdevelop. But we don't require anyone else to have that. There is a "configure" script that sets up things like where the libraries go and some features that man be in or out depending on your environment. We also use libraries that are easily available, such as gtk. Most of us use all free systems, and we certainly dont require anything that isn't free. We consider the free operating systems to be the highest priority, and the makers of the free operating systems consider free applications to be their highest priority. By "free" here, I refer to the FSF definition, libre, freedom, etc. not zero cost closed source. We distribute as source in tarballs, without the libraries that you can get elsewhere. If you have a minimal system, you must get the libraries yourself, from somewhere else. Most users do not compile their own code, but rather rely on pre-compiled packages. These packages are usually for a specific distribution, and they are maintained by someone else, not the same people who create the software. These package maintainers pick up the tarball, compile it, customize it for a particular distribution, make sure it gets all the libraries, and package it so it is ready to use. As you would expect, these are always a little behind the original source packages. I must emphasize again, that these packages are made by someone other than the the original creator of the package. It is a serious ongoing committment. These people are also the first contact for the binary package for that distribution. They also provide valuable testing by building in many different environments, and feeding back the results. For the Windows packages to be successful, it must be the same arragement. It is more difficult because Microsoft seems to go out of its way to make this difficult. The first step is to put the extra infrastructure in place. Then you can do specific packages. It isn't just a matter of making a package. Someone needs to make a commitment to keep track of the updates, and be an active member of our community. That means to be available to answer the flood of questions that will certainly come. For myself, I develop Gnucap, but I just use the Debian (unstable) packages for everything else. I only install from source if I must, but I require that I have the option to do so. One reason sometimes I must is to get a later version. The packages are based on official releases, not CVS checkouts or development snapshots. Again, for a Windows port to be successful, it must work the same way. Someone new must step up to the task. The rest of us are all too busy with our piece. If you are willing to take on the task, we will all help you do it, in the same way that we help those who do the packages for other systems. We will expect the same feedback and cooperation from you, and a commitment from you to support your users. It is a difficult task. _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list [email protected] http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
