On Wed, 24 May 2000 21:22:56 EDT, the world broke into rejoicing as
Hendrik Boom <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
> > > Hmm, how about some kind of install program? I was thinking of doing
> > > this as a generic thing on my spare time, but something that checks if
> > > certain libraries are installed, and if they are not, wgets them or
> > > something similiar and installs them. You might get more newbie users to
> > > come over from windows that way. It seems that all the major commercial
> > > applications come with all the libraries they need.
> >
> > That's a good idea. If you plan on working on this, you might
> > check out the helix code installer (available at their website
> > at www.helixcode.com) which seems to be pretty good.
> >
> > dave
> >
> When you install an RPM, the system usually checks which packages you need
> (provided the packager of the RPM bothered to identify them).
> Under SuSE, and I presume others, you have the option of having them installe
d
> automatically too. Admittedly, the list of packages may be system-dependent;
> I suspect not all linuxes package everything in the same combinations.
> But a gnucash package that is included with a distribution will presumably
> not have library problems. And *that* is, I suspect, how most naive
> users will get it.
I don't see there being _massive_ value to designing anything to this
end.
The bulk of UNIX variations define their _own_ scheme for managing
such dependancies:
-> Debian uses dpkg to manage them;
-> SuSE, Red Hat Linux, Caldera OpenLinux, ... use RPM to manage them;
-> BSD users typically seem to use Ports to manage this.
It seems to me to make sense to use the appropriate dependancy management
system for differing Linux and BSD systems. If we build our own, all
we accomplish is to force an extra packaging system that will conflict
with the "native" one (e.g. - RPM/dpkg).
This covers the _vast_ majority of the systems at issue. It is,
admittedly, not helpful for the users of Irix, SCO, Solaris, AIX, or
HP-UX; hopefully they can provide some assistance in at least putting
together some form of "dependancy list" of what needs to be installed.
Note that the issues are not primarily "GnuCash" ones; they are tied to
_any GNOME-based software_.
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] - <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
"Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to using Windows
NT for mission-critical applications." --- What Yoda *meant* to say
