[Fwd: Re: [Gambas-user] Questions]

[daniel]

> At least the Lindows method allows some "standard"
> They had 0.53 and now 0.62, which is only two versions
> Except for the 20 people on this list who always have the "current" one
> Most of the folks out in the real world got whatever version they got
> And it is hard as hell writing software for 100 possible versions
> 
> Gambas needs...
> 1. A real "stable" version for people to work against

mmmhh... OK, but before you have an stable version, you need to program
it, and that's what people (mainly Benoît) is doing now, remember that
alpha and beta versions of any software are intended only for testing
pourposes, so I don't undestand at all why you need to program for 100
versions; just play with them and learn more about this new Basic. There
will be time in the future for a 1.0 version and big programs written
with that stable platform...

 People of big companies like RedHat or Mandrake uses to put unstable
versions of new software: remember thar RedHat suffered a lot with its
7.0 Linux distribution due to gcc and kernel, but there was not a
problem of gcc nor kernel people, they saw in big capital letters that
it was an unstable version, so there was possible changes and bugs. What
we should do now? Stop Gambas developement because Lindows folks decided
to include 0.53 in its distribution? Remember that Gambas people are not
Lindows employees, they (we) are trying to write a really good
developement tool, but it need more work, and changes if neccesary    

> 2. The ability to easily install on most major Linux distros
> 

Some people are working on it, you already have easy packages for
Mandrake, and other distributions will come soon, I suppose, as Benoît
has been adding lot of changes at MakeFiles to allow compile in
many distributions...

> The "killer" would be a Win version
> Gambas is easy and powerful and logical
> It could be the oft promised but never delivered
> Holy grail of programming, a true cross platform development tool
> 

Yes, this is true, and Gambas-Cygwin begins to work. More people that
can help on it? They will be very welcome!

Another possibility would be a Windows native version, but al least
all graphical part should be rewritten, as QT for Windows is not free at
all (may be the GTK or wxWindows component would be the cross-platform
answer), and of course all the network part using Winsock...

But remember that Gambas, in fact, is already cross-platform, as it
begins to compile and run on Solaris and FreeBSD. I mean cross-platform
does not mean Windows-Linux at all (do not forget OS/2 is still alive in
many computers)

Regards,

Daniel Campos