RE: RPM for gnome-libs 1.0.54?

["Andrew Post" <apost cbmi upmc edu>]

To simply say "well the
> programmers don't want to do it, so some random volunteer just has to", is
> wrong.

If said programmers were getting paid to do this, there would be no excuse
not to document. Since most of them are not, I suppose they can do whatever
they want. Redhat (and others) could help out the cause here by hiring some
people to take care of documentation and the minor glitches (like Help
buttons leading to nowhere) the core programmers couldn't be bothered with.

Andrew

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Raul Acevedo [mailto:raul@cantara.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 1999 9:38 AM
> To: gnome-list@gnome.org
> Subject: Re: RPM for gnome-libs 1.0.54?
>
>
> Keith Wright wrote:
>
>  > If you want real simple, what's wrong with (./configure; make)?
>
> If you are installing from tarballs exclusively, nothing.
>
> If you are installing even partially from RPMs, that doesn't work.
>
> Unfortunately, RedHat decided long ago that RPMs would put things
> in places
> different than a standard tarball install would.  So, doing the above
> simply does not work if you have installed things from RPM.  It is a royal
> pain, a very bad decision, and one of the main problems with RPM.  But
> that's the way it is.
>
>  > That command doesn't work on _any_ tarball, just on one that contains a
>  > tar'ed and gzip'ed RPM spec file.  Somebody has to make that spec file.
>
> Understood.  It was implied that under GNOME, the tarballs
> include the spec
> file.  Is this true for all the standard GNOME packages?
>
>  > This is just an RPM command with the build-from-zip'ed option.
>  It's not
>  > up to the Gnome programmers to document rpm.  Start with 'man rpm', if
>  > that doesn't do it RedHat sells a book called 'Maximum RPM'.
>
> Wrong.
>
> Looking up "man rpm" assumes I know I want rpm to do something.
>
> Tarballs vary wildly, containing everything from a simple Makefile to a
> whole autoconf setup.  It would never occur to me that rpm could be smart
> enough to `figure out' whatever is inside a tarball and magically
> make RPMs
> out of it, because to me this seems intractable.
>
> Ah, but people put spec files in the tarballs to help it out!
>
> Such knowledge is a mystical magic secret because it is not well
> publicized.  If it is not well publicized, it might as well not
> exist.  All
> you gung ho programmers out there please reread that 20 or 30 times, write
> it on your foreheads, and make it popup on your computers every
> half hour.
>
> Ah, but if you had fully read all 13+ pages of "man rpm", or the 450 pages
> of "Maximum RPM", you would know this!
>
> The beauty of rpm is its simplicity, which means I haven't had to read all
> 13+ pages of its man page, or a whole book, to know how to use
> it.  THIS IS
> HOW IT SHOULD BE.  Again, if tarballs->RPMs were a semi-obvious
> thing, then
> maybe I should have looked into it.  But it never even remotely
> occurred to
> me because that seems impossible.  The magic about spec files and
> programmers putting them in there is just that, magic, unless it is made
> public.
>
> Finally, it is really annoying and incomprehensible to me that
> people STILL
> have this attitude "programmer's shouldn't document, users should RTFM".
> Yes, to some degree this is true, and I've many a times told people,
> including myself, to RTFM.  BUT THIS ATTITUDE IS WHY GNOME IS NECESSARY IN
> THE FIRST PLACE.  GNOME is necessary for Linux and Unix because this
> attitude made them hard to use.  It is this attitude that hinders more
> widespread acceptance of them.
>
> I can understand that programmers don't want to spend much time on stuff
> like this.  They don't necessarily have to.  I don't care who
> does it.  The
> GNOME project, as an entity, has to find people to do these
> things.  It has
> organizers whose job is to oversee these details.  To simply say "well the
> programmers don't want to do it, so some random volunteer just has to", is
> wrong.  There has to be an effort to make certain things happen, whether
> it's by programmers, or the people that do documentation, or the people
> that write up the web sites, or come up with spec files, or whatever.
>
> My apologies for being so negative.  I love Linux.  I love GNOME.  Believe
> it or not, I think everyone on the project does an amazing job.  It pains
> me to complain so much about this.  But I only do it because it
> needs to be
> said to make the project better, for the benefit of everyone.
>
> Raul
>
>
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