[Gambas-user] Debian

[Rob]

On Monday 21 July 2003 19:45, Ken Schrock wrote:

> Yes, quite old, beside, there is much one can't do with a binary package
> On top of that, since Gambas has a new version every 13 seconds
> And it seems to be a source oriented package in any case
> Not being able to compile it on ones distro of choice
> Is kind of a pita

I don't know what to tell you, there.  There was no Mandrake package at the 
time I started playing with Gambas, and I don't install anything on my system 
that doesn't come from an RPM, so I built it myself and made it available for 
all the other Mandrake users.  Nowadays it's easy because Benoit and I happen 
to be on the same Mandrake version, but when I started out I had to start 
from an out of date and not entirely correct SuSE spec file.

That is to say, if you want a package for a distribution none of us (by which 
I mean people already using Gambas) uses, it kinda falls on you to make it.  
If you're running Woody, according to "important notes" you should be okay 
already.  If you're running some older version of Debian, I again don't know 
what to tell you, except that it tends to be kinda difficult getting new 
desktop software working on "stable" Debian releases due to their being 
deliberately out of date.  

> Also, this doesn't seem to be limited to the Deb line
> (including distors like libranet on top of the others
>  which includes a lot of distros and Linux users)
> But tends to seem a general kind of thing
> (like hard to impossible on SuSe, etc)

Again, I only got my Mandrake package working by having the original Suse 
package available to work off of.  Any RPM-based distribution should be able 
to take my source RPM's, tweak them just a little, and make binary packages.  
You may even be able to use "alien" to get a package working under Debian, 
though I have no experience with that (and very little with Debian.)  See the 
Important Notes page on the website for the status of each distribution (he 
still has Mandrake 9.0 listed as a "waiting to hear from users" but it is 
working, the RPM's are up.)

> Adaptation of Gambas would be enhanced
> If it didn't seem like a RedHat \ Mandrake only kind of thing
> Particularly since Mandrake is currently in bankruptcy
> And RedHat is moving away from the desktop

I think Red Hat has been one of the distributions that's been especially tough 
to get Gambas working with.  There is going to be a focus on Mandrake for the 
foreseeable future because Benoit develops Gambas on it and I've been 
relatively quick making packages for it because of my anal-retentiveness 
about only installing software from packages.  If I had been running Debian, 
maybe there would be Suse users on here complaining about the lack of RPM's 
or something.  I don't know.  It's just the luck of the draw that the author 
and a loudmouth packager are both using the same OS, but I am not inclined to 
switch distributions regardless of current bankruptcy proceedings or geekily 
correctness.  I've run dozens of Linux distributions and I just keep coming 
back to the French, uh, excuse me, Freedom guys.

As far as Debian goes, I notice from a little googling that there seem to be a 
lot of little Lindows programs popping up that require Gambas, not just 
LindowsBoy.  I also have seen instructions for adding a Lindows apt source 
out there on the web.  Maybe "apt-get source gambas" after adding their apt 
source would get you the Lindows people's Debian equivalent of a spec file.

> Not always using the bleeding edge versions of Qt and KDE
> Which nobody currently has, increasing the pita factor
> Would also help

For what it's worth, Mandrake 9.0 is presently about 9 months old and is based 
on KDE 3.0.2 or something like that, which itself is about a year old, and I 
can still build Gambas for it.  This is in part because Benoit specifically 
fixed Gambas 0.62 so that it would work once again with Qt 3.0x.  The only 
hard and fast requirements I can see presently are gcc 3.2 (already a year 
old) and Qt 3.x (about 18 months.)  I expect Gambas' "optional" requirements 
to grow a lot as more components are added (regex, sockets, embedded 
database...) but the core should work on year-old software for a while yet.  

But surely you see the irony in not wanting to have to install bleeding-edge 
versions of other software in order to run bleeding-edge "alpha releases" of 
Gambas?  After all, Lindows' ancient version of Gambas is still only about 3 
months old....

We on the gambas-user list can't help users of other distributions with their 
build problems unless they come to the list with them, and when they do post, 
it seems to me Benoit helps rather enthusiastically.  Three people reported 
the same bug in a couple days, Benoit produced a patch.  Someone posted a 
weird compiler error, Benoit scratched his head and offered to ssh in and try 
to build it for them himself.  In fact, you yourself asked for help on June 
30.  Benoit responded asking for more info, like which Debian you were 
running since we've had success reports on Woody, and you never posted 
anything back, at least not publicly, until this rant.

I'd love to help people on whatever distribution to get Gambas running.  Let's 
see some of your compile errors so we can figure out what you need to install 
or update or whatever.  And if you're building on Debian and you succeed, 
please consider making and maintaining a .deb of it so other people won't 
have the same problems in the future.  It'd be a shame if Gambas were "RPM 
only" after all.

Rob