Survex 1.0.39 released

[Wookey]

+++ Andy Waddington [06-01-18 12:30 +0000]:
> On Wednesday 2006-01-18 11:01, you wrote:

> > It is likely that you need to 
> > have a gtk-devel or similar package installed as well as the plain gtk
> > ones. gtk-config is used to "determine the compiler and linker flags
> > that should be used to compile and link programs that use  GTK+" so is
> > only relevant for people who want to compile their own GTK+ programs,
> > hence the separation of the packages
> 
> I'll go and look for that. But my main point for the Survex authors
> was the lack of clues about how to find this out. Binary RPMs specify
> their dependencies (which can be hell in itself) but these source
> RPMs don't seem to report things like "needs gtk-devel" in the
> same way, so more supporting documentation is needed for those
> wanting to build Survex who shouldn't have to research a whole
> dependency tree themselves (much duplication of effort to find
> informatrion which teh authors must already know...)

It is difficult for the survex authors to adequately document the changing
needs of all the software survex builds on. We barely have time to write and
document survex itself. Expecting us to document the configuration issues of
gtk, wxwindows, X etc, is probably going too far, convenient as it might be
for you. Anyone building survex from source needs to know that they need
-dev packages. You can get a good idea which ones by looking at the survex
debian packages, which do specify their build-dependencies. (surely rpms
must have a mechanism for recording/reporting build-deps?)

If you want to write something in the light of what you have discovered for
building survex 1.1 on RPM-based distros, then I'm sure we'd be happy to
include it in the docs, but it will of course be wrong again in 6 months time.

Wookey
-- 
Aleph One Ltd, Bottisham, CAMBRIDGE, CB5 9BA, UK  Tel +44 (0) 1223 811679
work: http://www.aleph1.co.uk/     play: http://www.chaos.org.uk/~wookey/