Re: TkExtra, a comment

[Paul Johnson]

I was one of the people who, early-on, had trouble installing
Swarm, so I feel comfortable adding two cents here.  I think that
as long as machines differ enough to require careful configuration
parameters, the strategy ought to be to provide the source for
swarm and very careful, clear instructions on how to install from
source.  People who don't know how to install tcl/tk can learn. 
Marcus and Glen and Sven have been more than kind and as long as
the Swarm group puts out the documentation, I think it will be fine.
People who don't know anything about linux can learn, if they are
just given clear instructions.  

It does bother me a bit when Marcus says tcl/tk are "autoconfiguring".
Someone who did not know better would think that means they are going
to configure themselves.  They don't really, since the user has
to be smart enough to add details to the ./configure command.  If
you don't know what I mean, look at the step by step guide to installing
Swarm on Redhat 5.0 I wrote to the mailing list.  These are not autoconfiguring
in the ordinary sense in which computer users would take it.

Ive complained about the "how to install"info
provided in the swarm source itself.   I was just looking at the README
for 1.0.5 and it seems better than READMEs in the older editions. I
don't have a Swarm-1.0.1 handy to compare, but this seems more detailed.
The file includes hints about 
environment variable settings and so forth, not exactly step-by-step, 
but better than nothing.  It is still somewhat befuddling, I expect,
to a new user who doesn't know much about linux.

I guess my main point is that the archive install approach can hold up if
high quality instructions are provided.  The binary
distribution caused me more frustration than the archive install. After Sven T,
and a visitor to the Swarm list named Hal Devore, simply wrote down out the
steps to install tcl/tk, tclobjc, and blt, it was OK.

I think the RPM approach would be fishy because it gives someone who 
compiles the RPM too much power to dictate where files get stored on
my machine.  For example, I just downloaded a new RPm for enlightenment and
it sticks the files in /opt/enlightenment, whereas they previously were
put into /usr/local/enlightenment.  I could, I suppose, get the source
rpm, open it up, change the SPEC files or Patch the configuration, and
get it the way I like. But by that time, I would rather just install from  the
source.
Paul Johnson

On Sat, 24 Jan 1998, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:

> >>>>> "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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