Phil M Perry wrote: <snip> > I couldn't make it to the monthly meeting (car was in the shop), but if > it's a > major problem to supply ready-to-run executables (as in Windows) for a > wide range of architectures and Linux flavors/levels, and most non-geeks > don't want to touch a CLI, is there a solution? Can source tarballs, etc. > be distributed in a single universal package, and automatically compiled > and linked (after bringing in any prereqs, including compilers)? No getting > hands dirty running 'make' and related commands -- it just takes a bit > longer to install than a ready-to-run binary. Do such capabilities already > exist? Just a thought. I suppose that an alternative would be to distribute > Java bytecode or scripts such as Perl -- would they be totally platform- > independent? Sorry if this was covered at the meeting!
We touched on this one briefly in the end based on question from the
audience. My take on cross platform development is as follows:
Don't use C/C++. The performance benefit of compiled code vs.
interpreted or vm code is small, and the inability to have a universal
binary is a big draw back.
On the interpreted side you've got: perl, python, ruby, javascript
On the vm side you've got: c#, java
On the pure linux front, most all of these have GTK/Glade bindings,
which is where I'd focus.
If I was starting something brand new that I wanted to be a cross
platform gui shared between Linux and Windows and Mac, I'd start with
xulrunner and build on top of that. That would mean writing your
application in javascript + xul, which is impressively powerful at this
point. Songbird is a really interesting example of a xulrunner
application.
To see how far you can get with ruby as a gui, amarok is a great
example. With java, Miro and Azeurus. With c#, f-spot. I'm sure there
are lots of other good examples as well.
A further question is "can your application be a web application".
Given the advances in javascript libraries like JQuery, the answer to
this is yes a lot more often then you may think. If so, you don't need
to worry too much about the client platform (yes, there are differences
between IE and Firefox, but once you are using JQuery and friends you
get to offload quite a bit of that compatibility work).
-Sean
--
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Sean Dague Mid-Hudson Valley
sean at dague dot net Linux Users Group
http://dague.net http://mhvlug.org
There is no silver bullet. Plus, werewolves make better neighbors
than zombies, and they tend to keep the vampire population down.
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