[Gambas-user] A suggestion for simplifying the distribution of Gambas apps

[Bob Warren]

Dear Benoit and colleagues:

First of all, congratulations on producing what promises to be a 
wonderful product. I hope that Gambas really catches on throughout the 
programming community as it deserves.

The version of Gambas I am using is 1.0.13 available with Ubuntu. I have 
no intention of using anything other than whatever version of Gambas is 
easily installable. It is a pity that for some reason Ubuntu is not 
offering the latest stable version.

In version 1.0.13, I can make an executable object program, but attempts 
to make a (Debian) packaged version fail. Perhaps this has been fixed in 
later versions, I don't know.

As far as I can see, the executable I can successfully produce is more 
or less like a Windows executable, i.e. it depends on pre-installed 
libraries in the operating system. This always was a pain in the arse in 
Windows, and continues to be so in Linux and Gambas it seems. However, 
if I want my users to run my executable programs with no hassle, one 
easy way is to ask them to install Gambas itself first (which is very 
quick and automatic in Ubuntu) to get the runtimes into the system. 
Thereafter, the executables should run with no trouble***. Not perfectly 
straightforward, but no more trouble really than doing a conventional 
Windows-style setup.

[*** Not entirely true. If I change the name of the executable file - 
e.g. from "myprog.exe" to "my_new_prog" - it doesn't run anymore, even 
though it maintains its supposedly 'executable' permission status.]


Regarding the packaging option in Gambas, it seems to me that this 
option is a little too ambitious considering the numbers of different 
Linuxes out there and the rate at which they change. The packaging 
wizard even tries to take a pre-established desktop menu system into 
account for example. I don't know too much about the technical 
considerations, but it seems to me that such things put Gambas on a 
slippery slope from the very outset, and perhaps this is one reason why 
it fails in Ubuntu with version 1.0.13.

Since I do not have the patience or technical competence for compiling 
programs, sorting out dependency hells, reverting to Linux's version of 
DOS and so on, I dream of a simpler solution to the potential 
distribution of programs I may produce in Gambas in the future: the 
STANDALONE.

A single standalone executable program can be run from any part of the 
file system, including the desktop in most cases, and has all that it 
needs bundled with it for that particular Linux distro. You don't get a 
nice menu item inserted for you automatically, but in compensation you 
have a system which is much quicker, simpler, and more reliable. How 
about introducing the STANDALONE EXECUTABLE into Gambas?

Best regards to all,
Bob Warren