I've tried to intall Lazarus on a fresh Ubuntu (9.10) system, and ran
into any number of problems, that will effectivly prevent any newcomer
to ever give Lazarus an try :-(
The official Ubuntu packages did not allow to install a working version
of Lazarus, so I consulted the Lazarus homepage. If somebody can update
the Ubuntu repository, I'd give that solution another try.
The first show stopper in the Lazarus homepage is the lack of
installation instructions. I think that the typical newbie will follow
the "Downloads" link, then others in random order.
Downloads
=========
In SourceForge he'll find a bunch of files, with no indication of the
most appropriate one. There is a
56 MB i386.deb.tar
140 MB i386.deb
without any explanation of the difference.
Both packages result in more problems, preventing an immediate
installation :-(
FAQ
===
I can find nothing about Installation there :-(
Wiki
====
The wiki main page again lacks any hints about the installation. No
topic "install" can be found, but a *very* patient user may find in page
text matches "9. Installing Lazarus". I'm not very familiar with wiki,
could somebody add an forwarder for a search for "install" or
"installation"? And possibly explain the difference between "Getting
Lazarus" and "Installing Lazarus"?
Daily Snapshots
===============
The choice (by OS and package type) is somewhat clear. The Linux deb's
lack an hint like for the rpm's "needs fpc and fpc-src", but the newbie
may guess that this applies as well - but there's only a fpc.tar,
nothing for fpc-src. Okay, he'll find out later...
The hint "YOU ARE USING COMPLETELY UNTESTED SOFTWARE" is not very
encouraging, but fortunately there's a wiki link, that - oh Lord - gives
no further clues :-(
Getting the source
==================
A newbie wants to *run* Lazarus, and doesn't care about source code, so
the link should reflect the title and content of the linked page:
"Getting Lazarus".
Else this page looks most promising to Ubuntu users, which are addressed
in a specific topic - fine :-)
I had no time yet to follow the procedures. It would be nice if the
scripts could be downloaded, instead of copy&paste and chmod and ...
There's another link to an alternative repository, that looks well
supported, but I'll come back to it only in case of trouble with other
methods. [I'm addressing the official Lazarus maintainers here]
------------------------------------
So much for part 1 of my odyssee. I hope that the mentioned flaws will
be fixed soon, so that I know where and how to proceed. I've tried so
hard, for several days, to make Lazarus run on any of my Linux systems,
and now I'm so frustrated that none of my attempts succeeded. The worst
experience is a defunct openSuse 10.3, that stopped to install or
uninstall *any* software, after an attempt to upgrade to fpc 2.4 :-(
As it looks to me now, I do not only see Lazarus in a downward spiral,
instead the spiral already has reached ground zero :-(
If somebody can point out the most promising path to follow, I can
report in part 2 what further trouble prevented me from installing a
working version of Lazarus that way. It's ridiculous when some tar comes
with a bunch of packages, which cannot be installed due to dependency
issues. I'd expect at least a README that explains the required order of
installation, and/or refers to other resources with according explanations.
DoDi
--
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