Build Dependencies

[mike.perik@bankofamerica.com]

I would have to agree in part.  I built gnucash on a Sun box and I basicly
had to start from gnucash and work backwards with the dependencies until I
had everything built.  The approximate total number of libraries built is
about 64 from approximately 30 packages.  This was extremely frustrating and
time consuming.  It would be nice if there was a dependency tree some where.
The thing that really burns me is I would build a library that another
library needed, say version libglade > 0.11.  I grabbed the latest version
of libglade which is, at least at the time, 0.18.  I built it and moved on
to another package that needed it but some API changed between version 0.13
and 0.18. So really the first library needed libglade version >0.11 but <=
0.13.  Actually now that I look at the directory that has everything it was
the bonobo library.  Oh and then, some library needed db support and it need
it with the old 1.85 api and it wanted it in shared library format.  You can
build the latest db-3.1.17 with 1.85 compatability but the api is still
different.  Maybe I did something wrong, anyways, I finally got everything
to work but it took a week of working a couple hours a day when it should
have taken me maybe an afternoon.

The package that about sent me for a loop was the scm package.  The version
I got originally scm5d2 obviously had never been built for Sun so I had to
patch it, I found scm5d3 which  seemed to build better.  The installation
for it is really bad.  I still don't know if I have it installed properly.
This gets to my question why was Scheme picked as the scripting language.  I
know that it is powerful and all but I would not consider it a 'main stream'
language like Tcl or Perl.  I'm sure that some very valid reasons are
available but I've really been hesitant to dive in because I don't really
have the time to get really familiar with Scheme. 

Enough ranting,  I want to help and hopefully over the next month I'll be
able to do that.

Mike

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	gnucash-devel-request@lists.gnumatic.com
> [SMTP:gnucash-devel-request@lists.gnumatic.com]
> Sent:	Friday, September 29, 2000 12:01 PM
> To:	gnucash-devel@lists.gnumatic.com
> Subject:	gnucash-devel digest, Vol 1 #165 - 2 msgs
> 
> Sir/Ms.,
> 
>   I tried today, for a couple hours, to install gnucash on my LinuxPPC
> box. I failed due to an infuriating cycle of dependency failures and
> libraries that even rpmfind didn't list. I posted the LPPC users list
> once that I thought applications should be availible with all necessary
> libraries and dependencies included, like Abiword does (and they do it
> damn well, I might add.)
>   Well, in short, I was excoriated to no end for that idea. Oh, too much
> duplication. Oh, too many bytes. Oh, too much time. But ya know, I don't
> buy it.
>   You might pass this word on the the powers that be at gnucash.org;
> they've lost at least one customer already.
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> Reed Loefgren
> -- 
> 
> The promise of the Machine Age was
> to increase Leisure, not Productivity.
> 
>