[Gambas-user] Interpreter too old: Form1

[Rob]

On Saturday 29 March 2008 16:00, jbskaggs wrote:
> I dont want sound snippy- but what is the purpose of the
> installation package if you have to install the entire gambas to a
> new machine? Shouldn't the installation package include all the

If the packages are made correctly, they will have the necessary 
version of Gambas as a dependency, and any modern Linux will 
automatically install it.  You as an application developer need to be 
aware of which versions of your chosen language are available to the 
most users, and target that version.  I'm only just starting to 
deploy Gambas 2 applications now myself, and I've been writing in 
Gambas for my clients since about version 0.70.

Now, if you're generating packages directly from Gambas 2, and the 
version of Gambas they require is too old, that's a bug with the 
Gambas package generator.

> runtime files and interpretor needed?  I thought that was the
> purpose of a installer package?

Well, no, that's the purpose of a Windows installer package, which is 
why they have that thing called "DLL hell".  Every program comes with 
its own copies of dependencies, and sometimes a newer one is 
overwritten with an older one with the same name, or a newer one 
installed with one program breaks an older program.  

If your program needs a newer version of Gambas than Ubuntu provides, 
you should either make your own repository containing your programs' 
dependencies, or have your users add Daniel's Gambas repository at 
http://azores.linex.org/gambas-other to their list of sources.

I agree that Linux as a desktop OS needs a unified packaging scheme, 
but egos (both personal and corporate) are far too strong to allow 
the different distros to agree on one.  But Ubuntu's popularity 
simplifies things the way Red Hat's once did before they abandoned 
the desktop market.  So personally I would just target Ubuntu plus 
whatever is your personal choice (mine is Mandriva but I have one 
Ubuntu server.)

There is a "Smart" package manager ( http://labix.org/smart ) that 
works on most major distributions and claims to support packages of 
different kinds, and was meant to be the lingua franca we've all been 
waiting for.  But none of the distributions has adopted it that I 
know of, making it just an extra step in getting your software on the 
machines of non-technical users.  

> I need in open plain English a way to distribute my programs for
> the non technical end user.

Maybe you should look into "klik", which is a "single-click all 
dependencies included and installed into your home directory on any 
distro" packaging system, but I don't know if it's still being 
developed.  At one point, Gambas had been added to klik, but I don't 
know if it's possible to deploy Gambas applications that way or if 
the klik-able version has been kept up to date.  

I also don't know how well it works, because I've never tried it, just 
read good reviews and complaints about it.  Mandriva's packaging 
system works fine for me, but that's largely because I've been 
building my own packages for it for about 8 years.

Rob