Re: GNOME FTP site has updated extra-src section

[Martin Baulig <martin home-of-linux org>]

Andy Kahn <kahn@zk3.dec.com> writes:

> is there any change of packaging all of these files into one tar file,
> which uses a single, top-level, configure script to configure everything?

Well, unpacking them in some top-level directory and then having a script
like the autogen.sh that compiles them all at once should probably work.

Normally, it should not necessary to build any of those packages by hand
if you have a recent enough system - but who has a "recent enough system" ...

Personally, I also tend to only install packages when I need them and to only
upgrade if it's really necessary (... never touch a running system ...) - but
for GNOME this all is getting too old very quickly so it's really a mess to
keep the system up to date.

This is just a first step so that users can look at *one* central place to
download all the packages. The most important things is that you can stay
within one mirror during the download ...

> i find the ridiculous number of required packages just to use Gnome a
> big turn off and one of the main reasons why i do use Gnome.  e.g., get
> this package, compile that, install another.  the way KDE does it is
> all the needed support files go into a single gzip'd tar file:
> kde1.x-support.tar.gz.  this simplifies the installation requirements
> immensely.

Yeah, they also put all their image libraries into this .tar.gz - eats up
some disk space, but yes - its easier to install, you only need to compile
one big package and you can even go to lunch while it is compiling ...

The graphic library problem is really a problem, I have not yet collected
all the graphic libraries that are required for imlib and the extra stuff
for enlightenment nor have I a good idea how we should deal with this in
the feature.

On the other hand, the graphic libraries are not getting too old that quickly
as the gettext/autoconf/automake/libtool stuff which is changing every few
weeks so if someone finally manages to get them all installed this should be
good until the next sytem upgrade.

We need to find a sollution for this, I remember as I installed FreeBSD on
another hard disk of my machine I spent several hours picking up and compiling
all the dependencies before I could even start compiling gnome-libs.

-- 
Martin Baulig - martin@home-of-linux.org - http://www.home-of-linux.org