[Gambas-user] Software installation under Linux

[Rob]

On Wednesday 06 December 2006 02:35, Eilert wrote:
> Do you know how those projects like OOo handle this task? And
> Firefox for instance, you just throw the app into some
> directory, and it runs. Strange to me.

Firefox's executable is actually a shellscript that adds the 
directory of the executable to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment 
variable, to let it access libraries in the installation 
directory, and then runs the real Firefox binary.  I assume Klik 
works a similar way.

You can't do this with Gambas 1.x because its programs are hard 
coded to look for gbx in /usr/bin.  Gambas2 uses "env" to search 
the path for it, so assuming the library path isn't hardcoded, 
it should be possible to set the PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH and 
get gbx2 to find the Gambas components and dependent libs in a 
directory other than /usr/lib.

I won't have time to try this for a while, but if it is possible, 
someone should be able to use the Nullsoft installer or 
something similar to make a single-executable package that 
installs in a directory of the user's choice (along with all the 
dependent libraries, which will make it very big.)  And if 
that's possible, it's probably also possible to auto-create one 
from Gambas, if that's what users really want.

Rob