[Gambas-user] Project - Make ...

[Doriano Blengino]

NW ha scritto:
> Can anyone help me with the difference between Project --> Make --> Source Archive and Project --> Make --> Installation Package please? I think that the installation package is aimed at setting up a usable Gambas program for someone who does not have Gambas installed. Is that correct?
>
> If so, what is the purpose of source archive?  I have done some research via Google but am more confused than before.
>   
"Make installation package" builds an installable package of the program 
binaries; so you can distribuite your program (without sources). After 
you build, say, an RPM package, you can install your program on any 
machine having RPM system using "rpm -i blahblahblah" - even the 
dependencies are taken in account.

"Make source archive" does what its name implies: an archive (.tar.gz) 
containing the source of the program. It is useful for doing backups or 
share your sources with other people (you can see often in this list 
someone who attaches an archive to show others what the problem is: 
"send me your project" - "I attach a project which ...").
When you have an archive like this, "mytestproject-0.0.1.tar.gz", you 
extract it somewhere, and then you can open the project in the gambas IDE.

An installation package lets you run the program, but not to see/modify 
its internals; a source archive (or tarball) contains everything needed 
to revise, modify and compile the program, provided you have the needed 
tools (gambas compiler).

More about the source archive. As far as I know, gambas is the only one 
IDE which has a similar feature. Differently from other languages, it is 
not so clear what the various files in a project directory do. If one 
wanted to manually copy "the sources", he should try to analyze the 
single files (some of them are hidden) to decide what to include in the 
archive and what to exclude. The "Make source archive" function takes 
care of this: who, if not gambas itself, knows better what is part of 
the source and what is not?

Hope this is clear,
regards,

-- 
Doriano Blengino

"Listen twice before you speak.
This is why we have two ears, but only one mouth."