Re: why is gtk install so difficult?

[Sven Neumann <sven gimp org>]

Hi,

Ruben Safir Secretary NYLXS <ruben mrbrklyn com> writes:

> While it might be tedious to have a properly working autoconf
> test, it is what is needed for a sane installation of the source.

You obviously missed the cause of this particular problem. Of course
what you state here is correct in general.

> BTW - this problem is not just with gtk, but with gnome as well.
> 
> Nothing is more fustrating than being told by a gtk application that
> lib xyz doesn't exist, when you can see the library in plain sight
> on the file system.

IMO this is solely a problem of people not reading the docs. Building
GTK+ (and probably most if not all GNOME applications) is
straight-forward if you know a handful of rules. Basically you will
need to know how your compiler looks for include files and how your
linker looks for libraries. Then you should know how to change these
behaviours and what role pkg-config is playing in this game. All this
can be explained in full detail in about hundred lines. If people
would look at the file INSTALL, they would notice a link to a webpage
as well as a pointer to a local file which does just that. If you have
a working build environment and understand these simple rules, you
shouldn't run into any build problems.


Sven