On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 10:49 AM, Juha Manninen <juha.mannine...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi > > I have just witnessed how difficult installing Lazarus on Apple Mac can be, > although I think the same applies to other operating systems, too. > I made a program for my friend using Lazarus. He has a modern Mac but he > mostly just browses Internet and writes e-mails and talks with Skype and > doesn't care about the technical details. His English skills are poor. > In essence he is not a geek. > > We had a Skype line open and he tried to install Lazarus and FPC. I felt like > trying to drive a car with eyes folded. He didn't know even the basic things > like using a command line. We wasted like 3 hours fighting with the > installation and it still didn't work! Both Lazarus and FPC were installed but > always gave errors. > Later I realized the wiki page tells you to install "Apple Developer tools". I > didn't realize it then. > > Now a question for Mac people: should we proceed with the newly found > instructions for Mac or should we use a Windows laptop which he can borrow? > At least I have installed Lazarus on Windows and could help him. > Are there some traps to look at when installing for Mac? > > Now a more generic thought : > * Easy installation is more important than the core developers may understand. > The typical claim is that if you are clever enough to program, you must be > clever enough to install FPC and Lazarus somehow. > No! For example my friend is not interested in programming but still he needs > Lazarus to build the program I made. I can't compile a binary for him because > I don't have a Mac. Cross-compiling for Mac is beyond my skills. > > Otherwise Lazarus is so easy to use for anyone. You add some controls to a > form and click the green arrow, like in a media player, and the program > compiles and runs. There is much complexity behind the scenes to make this > happen. > Something should be done for the installation in general. It should be more > automatic like for most other programs. Now a good Linux distro seems to be > the easiest platform for installation. The package manager takes care of FPC > dependency when installing Lazarus.
You are completly right! > Me and Marcos Douglas have recently improved the installation wiki pages a > little but that is not enough. ...and we will improved even more. MD -- _______________________________________________ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus