On 02/25/2014 10:06 AM, Dicebot wrote:
On Tuesday, 25 February 2014 at 14:51:48 UTC, Assaf Gordon wrote:
My target audience is not D developers - it is unix casual users
(not even developers). I want to make it the easiest for them to
use my program. If it's requires more than the standard "configure
&& make && make install" (or the cmake equivalent), then many of
them will not do it.
Then push it into distro repositories. You are NOT helping by
recommending them to do "make install", quite the contrary, harming
whole ecosystem. Casual users should not be even aware that "make
install" exists. Being one of package maintainers myself I really
hate this kind of "helping" attitude, it causes only trouble.
I'm sorry it makes you upset - I can see how frustrating it is for a package
maintainer.
But I think "harming the ecosystem" is a bit of a hyperbole - in an ideal world
where Linux Distros contain every piece of software (and up to date version), there is
indeed very little need to install from source.
But there are several real-world constraints, at least in the environment I
work in:
1. Software needs to run on variety of servers and distributions, some are very
old (e.g. CentOS 5.4 or Ubuntu 10.04).
Upgrading is not an option for these environments.
2. Software needs to be installed without root - to a user directory (i.e. using
"configure --prefix" or similar).
3. Software is updated too frequently, or is too new, or (sadly) too
experimental (code-wise) for inclusion in a stable distribution package - but
it still needs to be used.
4. It takes time for a software to be properly packaged, and users want to install it
now. Also - it will not be available in the "stable" branch of the distribution.
In addition, some distribution have extra requirements.
For example, Debian frowns upon compiling with static libraries when a shared
one is available.
If there is already a package in official Debian which is written in D, it
would be very helpful to see an example of the packaging process.
Single Linux-wide binary distribution is mostly a myth and dmd
shows it by its own.
Not sure what the "myth" is - but a statically-linked binaries work
well (if your program is self-contained and properly compiled), and
there are many examples of it.
Except you never have truly statically linked binaries, there is
always at least glibc.
I'm not sure I understand this statement.
If I link with "gcc -static" and my program is properly built, the resulting
binary does not require any library, not even glibc.
It uses only Linux ABI syscalls.
Unless I'm mistaken?
Please stop distributing software for Linux with Windows attitude.
Not sure what the "windows attitude" is, since I haven't developed software for
windows in 12 years...
My first choice would be to have a project in D which is easily compilable from
source code.
Either with "make" or "dub" or "configure" or anything else.
Once I have that, packaging (for a linux distribution) is straight forward, and
so is adding it to HomeBrew/LinuxBrew.
At the moment, I don't think it's possible (in the level of "easiness"
comparable with C/autotools-based projects).
The alternative (for linux) is distributing a binary program, and for that, a
static-binary is much more portable than a dynamic one.
Having GDC and LDC in Debian is an excellent start - I was not aware of them,
and it is certainly the right direction.
But those are still not available in the "stable" branches, and so, not easily
usable.
In the future this will definitely change.
-Gordon
