On 27-Apr-10, at 12:19 PM, Karl O. Pinc wrote:
On 04/26/2010 06:19:31 PM, Toby Thain wrote:
I don't think unpackaged OS X binaries are very useful, which is why
I
created the pkg+dmg.
I agree, because the Apple development kit is shipped,
if not installed, on every Mac.
It ships on the DVD but most people never install it, of course.
(Last I looked.) And
because ./configure ; make is painless.
To use your argument from above -- imho much too complex for most end
users. As well as requiring Apple Developer Tools (they have to go
find the original DVD, which may or may not even be possible), this
involves locating and downloading two source archives from two
different sites, and configuring and building them both; beyond the
pale for non-technical users, even though it's trivial for "us".
The pkg/dmg is, on the other hand, a genuine one click install. (Even
if you have to do a 2nd key install, which pkg has to be built
individually and distributed securely anyway.)
It seems logical to me that an OS X binary dmg could be on the OpenVPN
downloads page, giving a similar level of convenience to "yum install
openvpn" or "apt-get install openvpn" or "emerge openvpn".
One thing that should *not*, in my opinion, be encouraged at all by
OpenVPN, are third party package managers (MacPorts, Fink, Homebrew
etc) as the binary route on OS X. That seems to do more harm than good.
MS Windows on
the other hand requires additional software
to compile anything. And the FOSS choices, which
are the the ones most universally available, are non-trivial
to install and use.
I'd bet cross compiling Un*x-to-Mac is easier too, but
I have no experience to back that up.
Generally very simple, fwiw. It probably helps that OS X toolchain is
gcc-based and many GNU utilities are standard.
Now that OpenVPN is accepting more patches cross compiling
Un*x-to-MSWindows will probably get easier but it will
never be easy.
If I were deploying it, rather than hacking on it, I would expect a
binary installer to be available for my platform, at http://openvpn.net
--Toby
Karl <k...@meme.com>
Free Software: "You don't pay back, you pay forward."
-- Robert A. Heinlein
