On Tue, 21 Jul 2009, Phil Barnett wrote: >>> Besides the packaging (.deb/.rpm/.tgz), I also wonder why >>> we need to create one for every distro. >>> And could we possibly do anything to make Harbour >>> "distro-independent". >> We cannot due to different binary dependencies in different Linux >> distribution. I do not believe that we will find anyone who can >> precisely document all binary dependencies inside compiled Harbour >> binaries and then will have enough knowledge about binary compatibility >> in other packages and distributions to be sure which combinations >> do not create potential troubles. >> Maybe in the future Harbour will be default part of the most popular >> distributions so binary distribution will not be our problem. > You can statically link in all the libraries. It makes a huge exe, but it > has no dependencies after that.
I know but these is only for executable files. It does not help in any way to make libraries compatible between distributions. In above case we were talking about distributing Harbour so library compatibility is the most important part. It means that to know if Harbour compiled with distro abc-x.y.z works in other distribution you have to know that all header files included by Harbour gives binary compatible code and both distros using exactly the same GCC settings which may effect binary compatibility. Harbour contrib depends on many different libraries and in this moment it's stop to be trivial to give answer about potential problems. Even if find some combinations and check that Harbour compiled with distro abc-x.y.z can be used to create executable files with distro qwe-i.j.k then it's only single combination which does not help us in reducing number of Harbour binary distribution. best regards, Przemek _______________________________________________ Harbour mailing list [email protected] http://lists.harbour-project.org/mailman/listinfo/harbour
