Hi Jason, On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 11:06 PM, Jason Daly<jd...@ist.ucf.edu> wrote: > There's no loss of perpective that I can detect. I think we're all still > dealing with facts here. The fact is that there is currently no way to > install CMake 2.6 on a Red Hat Enterprise or CentOS in a way that can be > easily maintained and administered. The sysadmin's response may be a bit > haughty, but nothing he said was untrue. > > From what I can tell, there are three ways to approach this. Either OSG can > continue to support CMake 2.4.5 until RHEL catches up to 2.6, or the > sysadmins can make an exception and make CMake 2.6 available without an RPM, > or the developers can stay with the current version of OSG until the next > CMake becomes available on their systems.
The loss in perspective is that the illusion that RHEL/CentOS and all the other long term supported linux distributions can bundle not only the core operating systems but ten's of thousands of other open source tools as one single supported and consistent entity. No other operating system vendors attempt to do this - they just ship the operating systems and the all the rest of the tools are provided by extra separate entitities and typically provided by 3rd parties. Some of these third party apps might rev at the same rate as the underlying OS, but typically don't. Now it's very cool that linux distributions do attempt this almost impossible feat, but and it is humongous but there are problems with this approach of bundling practically everything together and rev's at the same rate is that in the 3rd party vendors can't be expected to pay for the support for this locked in versions of their software for the benefit of the linux distribution vendors. This very thread is about that fact that CentOS/RHEL have locked in versions of software that is DIRECTLY cause support work for us - not just the CentOS/RHEL users, but others who have nothing to do with developing or supporting this distro's. You might pay RHEL for support for doing this but are you paying all the rest of the ecosystem like OSG community members for the luxury of you using the tools that only come with a particular RHEL. So this is perspective that is missing. It's your companies choice to use a distro with locked in versions of software, and there is a cost of this that goes far beyond your own company. Who's to pay for this? In the case of community like this core developers have to put up with support hassles like this as just part of running a project, but we need help, and help specifically from people who wish to use locked in versions of software due to using CentOS/RHEL etc - you guys need to spend the time in properly supporting software that you need, this means allotting time and resources to help out with testing. For instance we have the CDash dashboard to tracking nightly builds. Also talk with your management about this issue - if you want the luxury of using a fixed version of OS and associated tools then their is this extra cost that you need to factor in, if you don't have the ability to keep track of supported software then you have to pony up the 3rd party support to cover this. Robert. _______________________________________________ osg-users mailing list osg-users@lists.openscenegraph.org http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org
