In the interest of accessibility to a stable version of the GAMBAS runtime without requiring users to add a PPA or drop to the command line, I think it may be useful to add an "auto-update" feature or equivalent.
Currently users have three ways to install GAMBAS: (1) Install from their distro's package manager, (2) add the stable or daily PPA, and (3) compile from source. Users who will be using GAMBAS to program will have no trouble using any of these methods. Users who simply need the runtime to use a GAMBAS application however may require a dead-simple method, as they could in theory be the mythical Grandmother. Another problem is that the specific build of GAMBAS packaged with many distros is outdated or unstable. I can create a GAMBAS application using the stable PPA, create an installation package, distribute it, and users who install it may not be able to run the program because their distro's GAMBAS build is too old. I don't know the best solution to these problems, though I can think of some possibilities: Add an option when creating an installation package to prompt the user to install dependencies from the stable PPA or from source. When the user begins to install the package, a script will be run that prompts them if they'd like to install updated runtime dependencies with the default answer being Yes. Whether the PPA or sources are used depends on the option chosen when building the installation package. Another possibility is to have an option when creating an installation package that includes the runtime dependencies of the dev's build environment. Instead of the package pulling dependencies from the target system's repositories it would simply use the included packages. I know that's not the Linux or GAMBAS way, but it's better than using old GAMBAS packages in the user's repositories that may not work at all. Remember, these solutions are for users that either don't know or don't want to know the "right" way to do things, they just want to run the program. Yet another possibility is to have an option when creating an installation package that would cause the execution of the installed application itself to check the installed runtime dependencies (if any) against the stable PPA's runtime dependencies and prompt the user to update if there is a discrepancy. It could even add the PPA, install the dependencies, then remove the PPA. Solutions requiring the automatic compilation from source would be more difficult, as the target environment would need to be set up with build tools first. Solutions adding a PPA would be easier assuming the target environment's distribution version was supported by the PPA. I don't know how reliable the solution including the developer's runtime dependencies would be. IMHO for GAMBAS to properly dominate the world, installing a GAMBAS program really should be as easy as double-clicking a .deb/.rpm and clicking Next, Next, etc. So, is this a problem worth solving, and if so, what does everything think the best solution would be? -- Kevin Fishburne Eight Virtues www: http://sales.eightvirtues.com e-mail: sa...@eightvirtues.com phone: (770) 853-6271 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Slashdot TV. Video for Nerds. Stuff that matters. http://tv.slashdot.org/ _______________________________________________ Gambas-user mailing list Gambas-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gambas-user
