Re: The Library Problem
Christopher Browne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > 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). You're missing some fairly important issues here. We have talked about the "installer problem" at some length in the course of trying to make gnucash ready to sell. Haven't solved it, but we need to. Of course you want to have RPMs for rhat, suse, etc and .debs for Debian. The very simplest case of installation is just to use the system tools, install one package, and be done with it. This is the least invasive kind of install and the one that you want to do whenever possible. That's assuming that users have an up-to-date install of everything we need, including the Gnome tools, on one of the major distributions. To do this right, you have to detect that you are running on a debian (rhat, etc) system and that the installed dependency libraries are all up-to-date enough before going ahead and trying the install. You might have a fallback to try to upgrade installed versions of gnome, etc from packages on the distribution medium, given that the user is willing to do that. But what if you are installing on an old Slackware system that has been upgraded by hand a million times? What if it's a Red Hat system that doesn't have Gnome installed and is too far back in the stone ages to allow gnome to be installed without upgrading a bunch of other packages? I think most of the Linux installs out there are probably two years or less old, but there are a significant number that are older and cruftier than we want to imagine. In the end, you're going to need something almost like configure to make sure that the libraries you depend on are actually installed and you can find them (it's not good enough to trust that the package manager says they are; what if the user moved/renamed things?) The "sledgehammer" approach is to ship a statically-linked binary. That's really a last resort. And what if the user doing the install isn't root and can't even write in /usr/local? There's no reason someone on a big multiuser Linux system shouldn't be able to install gnucash from the CD (assuming they have CD read access). There needs to be some way to re-root the install at install time so that you can put gnucash under an arbitrary directory without re-configuring and re-building. Of course that means you can't use rpm or deb for that kind of install; need a straight tar file. I don't really have a clear idea how to address all these problems, but I think I have thought about it enough to say that a really good installer that cooperates with the package system on the install machine would be great. Bill Gribble
Re: The Library Problem
I think your problem is a fundamental one. It's the same problem **all** the commercial vendors have, whether they use gnome or not. See f.ex. StarOffice which was (still is?) statically linked even against the most basic labraries. It's what the LSB is about and here for (www.linuxbase.org). *t Tomas Pospisek - Freelance: Linuxing, Networking http://spin.ch/~tpo/freelance
Re: The Library Problem
Maybe have 2 or 3 versions of gnucash. Source, binary and statically linked everything binary for a the linux newbies who wouldn't know how to install everything else. At 06:48 PM 5/25/00 +0200, T.Pospisek's MailLists wrote: >I think your problem is a fundamental one. It's the same problem **all** >the commercial vendors have, whether they use gnome or not. See >f.ex. StarOffice which was (still is?) statically linked even against the >most basic labraries. -Garrett, http://www.wpi.edu/~mongoose/ "Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Re: The Library Problem
Garrett Banuk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Maybe have 2 or 3 versions of gnucash. Source, binary and statically > linked everything binary for a the linux newbies who wouldn't know how to > install everything else. It may be unrealistic, but I would like an install experience that's as novice-friendly as the Windows and MacOS installers (but that works a lot better and doesn't install needless junk on your machine). What that means to me is that you put a CD in the drive, double-click an icon, and answer a minimal number of questions, and the rest is done for you. Of course you should also be able to escape this process and install the RPM/deb by hand, or build from source, or run the "friendly" installer and just produce a shell script of commands as output that you can inspect and run at your leisure. An installer that can deal with all this is probably a sophisticated enough piece of software that it would deserve being "its own thing". Bill Gribble
Re: The Library Problem
Yes, I've thought about doing this. Maybe on my free time over this summer. I was going to do this for my college project but it just seems to small. It would really help to get people to migrate over to linux. Well this is getting off topic for this list... On 25 May 2000, Bill Gribble wrote: > Garrett Banuk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > Maybe have 2 or 3 versions of gnucash. Source, binary and statically > > linked everything binary for a the linux newbies who wouldn't know how to > > install everything else. > > It may be unrealistic, but I would like an install experience that's > as novice-friendly as the Windows and MacOS installers (but that works > a lot better and doesn't install needless junk on your machine). What > that means to me is that you put a CD in the drive, double-click an > icon, and answer a minimal number of questions, and the rest is done > for you. Of course you should also be able to escape this process and > install the RPM/deb by hand, or build from source, or run the > "friendly" installer and just produce a shell script of commands as > output that you can inspect and run at your leisure. > > An installer that can deal with all this is probably a sophisticated > enough piece of software that it would deserve being "its own thing". > > Bill Gribble > > >
Re: missing xml, print; 1.3.7, SuSE
> > When compiling 1.3.7 on SuSE 6.3, it could not find two libraries: > > > > xml > > print > > > > When I installed packages libxml (and libxmld too, just in case) > > from series d, the xml problem went away (although I had to delete > > the source tree and reuntar it to make it find xml; a make clean > > didn't work). One or both of these (I don't know which) should be > > mentioned in doc/SuSE-6.3.txt > > > Does anyone know which package contains the print library? > > I think that is the gnome-print library. You should be able > to compile without it, although you won't have the check-printing > feature. gnome-print is in series gnm: gnprint and gnprintd I added these (yet another) dependencies to SuSE-6.3.txt. (Perhaps we should recommend to buy a new big harddisk and just install the whole 6 CDROMs ;-).) Dave: Please add the attached SuSE-6.3.txt to CVS. Herbert. BTW: For what is XML used in GnuCash? -- Herbert Thoma FhG-IIS A, Studio Department Am Weichselgarten3, 91058 Erlangen, Germany Phone: +49-9131-776-323 Fax: +49-9131-776-399 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] www: http://www.iis.fhg.de/ SuSE-6.3.txt
Re: missing xml, print; 1.3.7, SuSE
> > BTW: For what is XML used in GnuCash? XML is not used by GnuCash directly, it's used by the gnome libraries that are linked to GnuCash. I think it's used by the gnome-print library, though what for I don't know. dave
1.3.7 compile problems (g-wrap)
Is the list still active. The list archives seem to have stopped at March for some reason, so I was not sure... 1.3.7 won't compile. So far, it's due to problems with g-wrap-guile. I futzed with configure so it won't look for swig (why is that still in there--a message from March said y'all needed to fix the build process to disable swig for gnome builds). Then, I futzed with src/g-wrap/Makefile.in, replacing all g-wrap-guile with $(GWRAPBIN), and setting GWRAPBIN = @top_dir@/lib/g-wrap/guile/g-wrap-guile. I did that, because before I did, make crashed because it couldn't *find* g-wrap-guile. :( Then, I had to chmod +x g-wrap-guile. Now, I get the following error: make[4]: Entering directory `/home/me2v/src/BUILD/gnucash-1.3.7/src/g-wrap' rm -f *.wrap ../../lib/g-wrap/guile/g-wrap-guile gnc.gwp ERROR: In procedure gsubr-apply in expression (scm-error (quote misc-error) #f ...): ERROR: no such module (site g-wrap) make[4]: *** [gnome.wrap] Error 2 make[4]: Leaving directory `/home/me2v/src/BUILD/gnucash-1.3.7/src/g-wrap' make[3]: *** [gnome] Error 2 make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/me2v/src/BUILD/gnucash-1.3.7/src' make[2]: *** [build-flavor] Error 2 make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/me2v/src/BUILD/gnucash-1.3.7' make[1]: *** [gnome.real] Error 2 make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/me2v/src/BUILD/gnucash-1.3.7' make: *** [gnome] Error 2 me2v@reliant gnucash-1.3.7 $ locate scm How is it possible to compile this program? *Someone's* obviously done it--sure would like to know the secret... Also, is there a bug database anywhere? I couldn't find anything at the gnucash.org web site regarding bugs, -- Matthew Vanecek Visit my Website at http://mysite.directlink.net/linuxguy For answers type: perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5,(41*2),sqrt(7056),(unpack(c,H)-2),oct(115),10);' * For 93 million miles, there is nothing between the sun and my shadow except me. I'm always getting in the way of something...
Re: missing xml, print; 1.3.7, SuSE
> gnome-print is in series gnm: gnprint and gnprintd > > I added these (yet another) dependencies to SuSE-6.3.txt. > (Perhaps we should recommend to buy a new big harddisk and > just install the whole 6 CDROMs ;-).) > > Dave: Please add the attached SuSE-6.3.txt to CVS. > > Herbert. Thanks. It compiles and runs now. -- hendrik
What good are the logs?
Sorry to ask a stupid question, but what good are the logs that GnuCash writes out? They have lots of information, but I can't see any convenient way to use it (without doing some programming). In particular, when I forget to quit GnuCash before quitting X, I seem to get a log file but no saved account file. How can I recover my edits? Thanks, Dylan Thurston
Re: The Library Problem
On Thu, 25 May 2000, Bill Gribble wrote: > And what if the user doing the install isn't root and can't even write > in /usr/local? ... There needs to be some way to re-root the > install at install time so that you can put gnucash under an arbitrary > directory without re-configuring and re-building. Of course that > means you can't use rpm or deb for that kind of install; need a > straight tar file. Is RPM's support for relocatable packages good enough? See http://www.rpmdp.org/rpmbook/node80.html. The location of the configuration file /etc/gnucache/config may be a sticking point; everything else seems to be under /usr.
Re: What good are the logs?
> Sorry to ask a stupid question, but what good are the logs that GnuCash > writes out? They have lots of information, but I can't see any convenient > way to use it (without doing some programming). > > In particular, when I forget to quit GnuCash before quitting X, I seem > to get a log file but no saved account file. How can I recover my > edits? It's not a stupid question and the answer is "right now, they aren't much use :)". The only thing they provide right now is support to reconstructing what you did manually, but there is no automated way to reconstruct from the log. dave
