Big, fat statically-linked gnumeric executable

[Blaise Montandon <montandon_b naptheon com>]

Simon Taylor,   ( simon unisolve com au ? )  ( gnumeric-list gnome org ? )

I read your 15mar2002 e-mail to Gaziz - namely:

--------------------------------------------------------------------
START-QUOTE

Gaziz,

> I want to update gnumeric from 0.67 to latest stable 1.0.4.x.
>
> A tree of dependencies is pretty deep and I wonder if there is a tool for
> automatically resolving package dependencies...

I found this process *very* time-consuming in Red Hat 7.1 (intel), but I was 
able to build the damn thing in the end. 

The finished gnumeric was worth the effort, it's a great tool.

So here are my tips, but keep in mind I'm not a gnumeric developer, and know 
very little about gnome or gnumeric internals.

1) Old versions of the gnome-config utility will cause you great pain. I had 
to remove the default Red Hat one, and replace it with a recent version.
(You may not have to do this in Red Hat 7.2.....)

2) I could not get gnome-config to be happy with the Gnome App Libraries, 
(0.16). So I resorted to commenting out this section of the configure script 
and hard-coding a "yes" in the appropriate place.

3) I had to remove old versions of a number of the gnome libraries

4) I had to add /usr/local/lib to /etc/ld.so.conf

Anyone know of a good source of statically-linked gnumeric builds? I for one
would be happy to download and use a bit, fat executable, rather than have to
learn so much about the build environment. ;-)
 
Regards,

Simon Taylor

END-QUOTE
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Simon,
I heartily agree with your last paragraph.  I too would be happy to
user a big, fat statically-linked gnumeric executable.

With 100Mbps Ethernet connections to be desktop being common now,
a 100Meg executable will download from a server in less than
15 seconds.  That will do just fine with me.

1) I won't have to step through resolving about 10 '.so' names
   --- only to finally hit one for which I cannot find the containing
   lib/package.

   [I resolved  'libgnomeole2.so.1'  &  'libgal.so.20' &
    'libgnomeprint.so.16' --- but now I am stuck.  I cannot
    find a source of 'libfreetype.so.7'.]

2) I do not have to worry about some shared-object, if it is
   in a truly-shared library, being replaced someday --- and
   not being compatible with gnumeric 1.0.8.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

So if you find a statically-linked gnumeric build, WOULD YOU
PLEASE LET ME KNOW ?!!

--------------------------------------------------------------------

By the way, I found a real nice Wordpad-like word-processor named
'Ted' (pre-built binary for SGI-IRIX) at 

A 'ted' 'tarball', built for SGI-IRIX, is available from

http://ftp.mayn.de/pub/irix/tools/INDEX.html .

---

The author and maintainer is  Mark de Does of the Netherlands.

The  primary   web-site   is  http://www.nllgg.nl/Ted/index.html.

THANK YOU, MARK de Does!

---

A very nice aspect of the Ted system is that it is a very compact, easy
installation.  It does NOT involve a lot of references to special, additional
'shared object' (dynamic link) libraries.  It is simply an executable
along with some font and spell-check files --- and a single, comprehensive
help file.

---

A couple of distinctive features that are documented in the Ted help guide:

  - Ted uses Microsoft RTF as its native file format.
    Microsoft Word and Wordpad can read files produced by Ted.
    Usually Ted can read .rtf files from Microsoft Word and Wordpad.
    As Ted does not support all features of Word, some formatting
    information might be lost.

  - Ted can import pictures in JPEG, GIF, TIFF, PNG, and several other raster
    file formats.

---

'Ted' will tide me over until I can get Abiword for SGI-IRIX built
--- and until an SGI-IRIX build of OpenOffice becomes available.

(I am stuck on another unresolved .so --- 'libwmf-0.2.so.7' ---
 for abiword 1.0.2.)

---

I am sending a copy of this e-mail to a couple of SGI-developers
(Victor Riley and Jeff Hanson  ; at http://porting.openoffice.org/irix/ )
working on OpenOffice --- so that they will, hopefully, make an
effort to use static-linking, as much as possible, in Open Office
modules.

-- 
Cheers, Blaise
------------------------
Blaise Montandon    757-380-2301
FEA/CAE/CAD/Viz/CAM Installation-Integration-Development-Support
Naptheon Inc.       (serving Newport News Shipbuilding)
Dept. T05  B521-2,  4101 Washington Ave.,  Newport News, VA 23606
montandon_b naptheon com  (formerly  montandon_b nns com)
-----------------------