Re: TkExtra, a comment

[Marcus G. Daniels]

>>>>> "PT" == Pietro Terna <address@hidden> writes:

PT> I just recall that the use of binary distributions seems to have
PT> higly increased Swarm diffusion.

Sigh, yes.  There is a high diversity of GNU/Linux configurations, and
the three Swarm distributions reflect that fact.

PT>     As an alternative way of simplification, can you plan to
PT> develop an automatic 'configure' procedure for source
PT> distribution?

Well, Tcl, Tk, BLT, and tclobjc are already autoconfiguring, and Swarm
itself is portable.  So I think you mean to have a a wrapper package,
in which everything is untarred (or even distributed), like Cygnus does.

      + hard to screw up
      - you may duplicate shared libraries, and if you try to work around
        it, end up with incompatibility for the same reasons that
        binary distributions don't always work on Linux-based systems
      - introduces redundancy
       
Another idea is to make Debian .deb and Redhat .rpm binary packages
for BLT and tclobjc (at one point a nice volunteer for Debian had done this). 

      + The Right Thing for GNU/Linux, given the FSSTND.
      - For other systems, it implies creating a mini-universe
        for the rule of the package manager, and installing yet another
        package, the package manager iteself.

How about this:  create .rpm and .deb files for Swarm's dependencies,
and continue to distribute binary distributions for everyone else? 


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