Jerry H. Chambers wrote: > Am I correct that the reason the programmer doesn't compile his program > ahead of time is he has no way of knowing if the user's system contains > the required "libraries"? I notice some fairly large applications do not > need to be compiled while some small one's do. >
All Open Source applications include the source code, or make it available, in addition to whatever binaries they might compile. This is the basis of the philosophy of Free Software. See: http://www.fsf.org/ Code is developed on one operating system, and then it is 'ported' to other operating systems. This is more complicated than just being a matter of libraries, because in some cases the API (Applications Programming Interface) varies substantially, form one OS to the next. So... creating compiled binaries for each and every OS, and variation of OS, is a huge undertaking, and one that is usually tackled by people other than the original developers, who probably wrote the project for their favourite OS, and then published the source code, and left the job of creating ports, to whoever wanted to run the application on whatever different platforms, they wanted. > RPM files - are they useable on any system that has the RPM function ? > Just guessing here, but I would imagine that RPM's would differ substantially, across different OS distributions, at least at the level of how the makefile was constructed. > The reason I'm asking is I am running "Damn Small Linux" which does not > support "compile" or "make" but does have the "RPM" tool and I'd like to > try some applications that are not part of the MyDSL repository. > 'compile' is not a valid command. 'gcc' invoked the C/C++ compiler. If you do not have a C compiler, linker, etc. on your system, you would have to install one. Apparently 'Damn Small Linux' is more concerned with size, than with functionality. This is good, where size trumps functionality. Try checking the info archives for DSL developers, and see what they are doing. There may be a 'developers version' of DSL, with the necessary tools included. -- -wittig http://www.robertwittig.com/ . http://robertwittig.net/ To unsubscribe from this list, please email [EMAIL PROTECTED] & you will be removed. Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LINUX_Newbies/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LINUX_Newbies/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
