Re: Revisiting the Gnome Bindings

[muppet <scott asofyet org>]

On Sep 22, 2004, at 4:29 AM, Murray Cumming wrote:
> Eugenia wrote:
> > Murray wrote:
> > > I think that perl developers are familiar with using CPAN. And I 
> > > think that might be the best way to install those bindings. I'm not 
> > > an expert on that though.
> >
> > I am talking about the users. Exactly because most distros don't 
> > package the bindings, the users will find themselves in need to 
> > install them by hand.
>
> Yes, sorry. Maybe the gtk-perl people can comment on this.

CPAN is the Perl Way.  Perl developers (including users who are perl 
developers) get their perl modules from CPAN.  You can install 
Bundle::Gnome2 (maintained by Gavin Brown of PerlPanel fame) and get 
everything related to Gtk2-Perl in one CPAN command line ("cpan -i 
Bundle::Gnome2") --- provided you have the proper developer packages 
and headers installed.

Of course, there are users who are not perl developers, and there are 
users who don't care what software is needed to run an application, 
because they just want to run an application.  Many of these users have 
never heard of CPAN before.  For those users we expect to be installed 
by binary packages.

Mandrake and Debian unstable both include Gtk2-Perl.  Mandrake 
installed us by default, as their system tools are written in perl 
(similar to Red Hat's system tools in pygtk).

There have been ebuilds for Gentoo floating around since before we hit 
1.0 over a year ago.  Our very own Ross McFarland uses Mach to create 
binary RPMs of nearly every release on our project site to support 
RH8.0, RH9, FC1, and FC2.

I would love to see Gtk2-Perl included in more distros --- it would be 
less work for us.


Having said all of that, many application writers use several modules 
from CPAN and suggest in their installation instructions that the users 
install Gtk2-Perl from CPAN.  So it's a rather mixed bag.

--
I think it worked on the Wiley Coyote model of project management - if
at any point you looked down and realised what you were doing was
impossible then you'd instantly fail.
  -- Simon Wistow