Re: gtkmm application redistribution

["Paul Davis" <pjdavis engineering uiowa edu>]

On 5/8/07, Jonathon Jongsma <jonathon jongsma gmail com> wrote:
> On 5/8/07, angelo <angelo70 gmail com> wrote:
> > I've developed a visual application using gtkmm and i would like to
> > redistribute both the windows and linux packages. I'm looking for some
> > suggestions on how to prepare the package,  expecially for the linux
> > distributions. I've tought, if is possible, to link all the libraries
> > statically, and to prepare some kind of package.run, just for user
> > facility, but i don't know if it's a good strategy, since i've seen many
> > time the source distribution (config, automake etc). And anyway, i don't
> > know how to start so any help/link/documentation on it is really
> > appreciated.
>
> Note that if you want to link libraries statically, you have to be
> very sure that the license allows it.  gtkmm for instance is licensed
> as LGPL, which allows non-free software to link it dynamically without
> requiring that the source of the application be GPL.  However, I
> believe linking statically is not allowed unless the application
> itself is licensed under GPL/LGPL.  I'm not a lawyer, so I might be
> slightly wrong here, but my point is that static linking of LGPL
> libraries introduces some legal issues that you have to make sure that
> you can satisfy.
>
> --
> jonner

There are other sorts of circumstances to consider as well.  If you
have a relatively homogenous linux distro you're targeting, you could
make packages for the distro's package manager (assuming it has one).

Most projects have multiple methods for distribution. The lowest
common denominator being a source tarball that can be compiled
locally.

Generally speaking, I wouldn't recommend statically linking an
executable. There have been a couple threads on the list about
problems encountered while trying to statically link an executable and
I'm not certain they were ever fully resolved.

HTH,
Paul Davis