Re: Confusion about glib/gtk+ rpms among users

[Michael Perry <mperry basin com>]

On  4 Mar, Richard Hult wrote:
> After looking through the many many posts about gnome on slashdot, it
> seems to me that lots of people are confused about the versions of glib
> and gtk+ and many think that you can't have both 1.0 and 1.2 (or 1.1)
> simultaneously. I think it's pretty important that this is mentioned
> somewhere in the installation instructions for rpms.
> 
> All the user has to do is rpm -ivh instead of -Uvh the glib/gtk+ 1.2
> packages and make sure that they only have the -devel-packs for the
> version they want to develop for.
> 
> I have seen many people telling others to simply rpm -ivh --nodeps... I
> think this a bad idea. Once a novice user have messed up his
> installation, he'll have a hard time getting it right... Maybe it could
> be mentioned that it's not a good idea?
> 
> And I think something should be mentioned about the quite large amount
> of packages required... The greatest advantage is that if one package
> is upgraded you don't need to download lots of stuff, except the
> very code that is updated. If the packages are listed with decent
> descriptions about excatly what they are good for, I think lots of the
> confusion and flame-like comments can be avoided...
> 
> Just my $0.02
> Richard
> 
> 
> 
Probably another issue is that when visiting rpm sites like rufus, new
people find such a variety of rpms for these programs and requirements
that they often leave somewhat confused and/or frustrated.  I wanted to
update gtk/glib using rpms on my suse system but spent an evening
reading how this gtk needs this other one but that one needs this other
one which, in turn, cannot be installed anyways because it needs glib. 
Then the hunt goes on into glib.

I think your comments about multiple glib/gtk installs is quite good
because I have went down that road myself and ended up with seriously
broken stuff; broken in the areas that I most wanted to use.  I ended
up compiling glib/gtk 1.20 and now am somewhat concerned about applying
rpm files for suse 6 for gnome 1.00.  In previous upgrades like suse
5.2 to 5.3 I had problems with my self-compiled libs.  So what happens
now installing rpm files looking for things like glib or gtk in certain
locations.  I dont mind compiling at all.  I also dont mind using rpms
at all :)

Those are my additional few cents...

-- 
Michael E. Perry
mperry@basin.com
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