Dependency hell redux

[Rob Walker]

>>>>> On Fri, 15 Jun 2001 08:02:32 -0600, Bjorn Helgaas
>>>>> <bjorn_helgaas@hp.com> said:

Rob> What about a downloadable .tar.gz file which is all n Megs of
Rob> libraries and gnucash and whatnot, and the user is told to "cd ~
Rob> && tar -zxvf <filename>".  That would create a ~/gnucash-app
Rob> directory...

Bjorn> Using a .tar.gz file makes it easier for developers/packagers,
Bjorn> but harder for users.  Most people are users.  Wearing my
Bjorn> "user" hat, I want my package management experience to be
Bjorn> seamless.  Every package should install, configure, and upgrade
Bjorn> the same way.

I agree that every package should install configure and upgrade the
same way.  However, that means that the gnucash users have to wait for
a couple of things.  1. the gnucash team to release gnucash (and with
1.6.0 out, 1.6.1 will be close behind, et cetera)  2.  someone (I say
the distro vendors are responsible, the gnucash team is doing some of
this on their own)

I think that this is a burden that the gnucash team is trying to
shoulder, but they can't do it perfectly for everyone.  I think that
the best thing would be for the OS vendors to have the equivalent to
"apt-get --build source <packagename>" working for their platform, and
then the gnucash guys would just include .spec or whatever files for
each distro, as provided by the distro vendors.

The problem is that this is difficult to do well, and to support every
distribution.  Witness Ximian Gnome (is that it's own distribution
yet?).  As for one single binary, I would hope that the gnucash team
would be able to provide that until the time that each individual
Distribution vendor (including Sun for Solaris!) creates their version
of a .spec file and submits it to the gnucash team for inclusion in
the main tree.

I don't know how to get around the added work that supporting some
distros has given the gnucash team, other than static, one-off
binaries for each kernel out there.  (solaris, AIX, linux, hp-ux,
whatever)  The users could even contribute these, if they were the
only ones with access to that OS.  

rob