On Thu, 30 Aug 2001, Sinisa Milivojevic wrote:
> But it can not become that if you expect users to build anything from
> source. We at MySQL have learned that lesson 3 - 4 years ago.
I disagree. Compiling from source _doesn't_ mean that the user
should be a programmer. It just has to be easy: it could be as
easy as installing a binary, even easier since you generally
need not to care so much about correct library versions or
even what computer architecture are you using.
The only downside is that compiling takes some time. But with
fast computers it is not a big deal, I think.
The problem presently is that the C and especially C++
APIs and system environments tend to change often and you need
to modify some bit in the source to get it to compile.
But this is a thing that just should be standardized well enough
(not completely, but enough so that configure can do the rest).
(also one problem is the unstable compilers RedHat is using,
one would need a reliable compiler)
Of course, if a binary distribution doesn't work out of the
box there's usually nothing you can do and so it is "easier".
The GNU ./configure; make; make install is very good, but
for anybody even that is too difficult I guess. But a simple
graphical wraparound of the process should be easy to do.
(I have planned to do a GUI configure package installer,
although I have left it at the planning stage so far)
