Re: why is gtk install so difficult?

[Kristian Rietveld <kris gtk org>]

On Wed, 2003-10-15 at 11:58, Ruben Safir Secretary NYLXS wrote:
> This is a very poor excuse and neede not be true.  Nearly every important
> package on my system is installed with autoconf and make, without trouble,
> from sendmail, bind, apache, Perl, X, etc etc etc.

I really do not understand why you would have any problems
compiling/installing GTK+, if you are able to compile the packages you
mentioned. I think GTK+ is trivial to install.

> GTK is only hard to compile and install by hand because the developers have
> chosen to make it so.  Originally, it was no problem.  Even compiling just
> Balsa now with the aspell libraries is a nightmare.

Sure, the developers are the bad people. Keep in mind that when software
is difficult to compile, you will have less testers, and less people
submitting patches. And that's not what developers want; it's in our own
(and of course the project's) advantage to make the software easy to
compile, so we get more testers and more persons submitting patches.

Also, can you give any suggestions to make GTK+ easier to compile?
Constructive criticism is generally more useful than just complaining. I
fail to see how GTK+ can make Balsa with aspell support more difficult
to compile than Balsa without aspell support. But maybe that's just me.


	-Kris

> 
> This has nothing to do with the distribution.  It's not the fault of the 
> distribtuion.  It has nothing to do with the distribution.
> 
> Ruben