g-wrap lost - So am I

[David Tangye]

Christopher Hicks wrote:
 > On Wed, 25 Sep 2002 David Hampton <hampton@employees.org> wrote:
 >
 >>On Wed, 2002-09-25 at 05:04, John L. Turner wrote:
 >>
 >>>? Can someone explain to a newbies, why setup / install programs
 >>>for gnucash and other Linux applications can NOT use:
 >>> find / -name "What is needed"
 >>>to locate the lib??? that the program needs
 >>>
 >>>? Why is it the responsibly of the user to know these things
 >>
 >>Because you may have multiple version of the program installed on your
 >>system.  For example, I have both g-wrap 1.2.1 and g-wrap 1.3.2
 >>installed in parallel, gnome 1.4 and gnome 2.0 installed in parallel,
 >>etc.
 >
 > So!?!  A "may have" doesn't mean that there shouldn't be an intelligent
 > default.  Leaving this a nob that people HAVE to twiddle just 
confuses the
 > newbs.  Most people that have multiple versions of g-wrap will be people
 > who realize that configure takes lots of options they can play with.
 > That's how people usually deal with "may haves".

Hi folks. my 2cents worth. I have been 20 years in IT, and most of them
in the deep end doing programming, but especially installs and bugfixes
of stuff like Oracle on all sorts of platforms since the late 80's and 
also Linux-based stuff. I am now in real estate - right out of IT 
altogether. The point raised above touches on a very very important 
point that techies in IT companies often do not realise the importance 
of. Specifically, unless an app like Gnucash is made an utter no-brainer 
to install, with auto-options for us great herd of plebs who do not wish 
to know the details but rather insist that it either loads with a click 
or it gets chucked in the bin, then that app will never make it into 
mainstream.

This is the biggest issue facing the while gnu-based world right now.
Take me, I no longer have the time nor interest to bugger around with
the ins and outs of a package. Most folk are worse: they do not have the
experience to even think about it.
I want an accounts package. I want to bung it on and drive it. I WILL
NOT spend time fiddling around trying to get it onboard. I just do not
have time nor inclination. I will stay with MYOB under Windoze instead
even though I hate it, because its there and it works (plus anyway it
sounds from this list that gnucash still is VERY basic in function and
way off a Quickbooks/MYOB).

I just upgraded to RedHat 7.3 and still gnucash does not work. I check
their website. A whole web page of stuff (dependencies) is needed and
they expect me to hunt for the stuff that is missing and install them.
g-wrap is one of them. What is gwrap? Who cares!! At least its a
package. Other dependencies seem to be individual files. How the hell do
I fing what package each of them is in. What a cockup!! I need the
gnucash rpm to just grab the relevant dependent packages and bung them
onboard. I do not even want to know about it.

Also I want everything to be rpm based of course, since I use RedHat 
make, make install, make clear etc etc; forget it. I want to click on 
"Install" or at worst "cd [dir] ; install/setup" and it should just happen.

Get the idea?

Cheers
David Tangye.