Re: Did GNOME go 1.0 too early?

[Andy Kahn <kahn zk3 dec com>]

On Thu, Mar 04, 1999 at 01:04:50AM -0500, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 4 Mar 1999, Andy Kahn wrote:
> > 
> > well, from what i understand, GNOME is **not** supposed to be
> > limited to just Linux.  with that in mind, any non-Linux type
> > of Unix will have to install from the tar sources.  one of my
> > systems fall under this category, and i really see no reason
> > why i have to go and figure out which files i need, which order
> > to compile them, and then which to install.
> 
> Because that's the only way to install software on those systems. That's
> not the Gnome team's fault. 

that's not entirely true.  most commercial Unix's came along with
a package system long before Linux ever had one.  e.g.,
	Sun Solaris : 'pkgadd'
	SGI Irix    : 'inst'
	DEC Unix    : 'setld'
offhand, i don't know what HP-UX and AIX use, but seeing Solaris
is the most popular among the commercial Unix's, it's a shame that
more (free) software distributors/vendors/makers don't simply provide
their software using pkgadd.

but my point here being that the only packages provided by GNOME are
Linux specific (debian and redhat), so the rest of the Unix world
has no choice other than to compile from the tar'd sources.  and THAT
in itself is a huge, messy, confusing, and rather convoluted process.


> That's because Gnome has more features. It has Imlib, esound, and ORBit; 
> those are the three required packages that have no KDE analogue in the
> release you're talking about. (KOffice uses Mico, but AFAIK it isn't part
> of the base system.)
> 
> The base Gnome system:
> glib, gtk        ( == Qt)
> Imlib
> ORBit
> esound
> gnome-libs       ( == kdelibs)
> 
> Everything else is considered "applications" and is optional and 
> can be installed in any order, just like KDE. AFAIK anyway.

the three in the middle, plus all the other libraries and dependencies
that they may rely on (libgif, libtiff, lib this or that) should all
be rounded up together similar to the kdesupport package.  THAT in
itself would be a HUGE lifesaver.


> I think you're right that there's no documentation, that's the heart of
> the problem. But we are here on the list to help.

hmm... no documentation.  that sounds familiar.  it looks like 
somehow, another GTK "feature" got inherited to GNOME! :)
--andy