Re: Making demo programs more evident...

[Hans-Bernhard B. <br...@ph...>]

On Sun, 9 May 2004, Petr Mikulik wrote:

> Hmm on "unix" .. "make install" does not install demos, so there is not
> "properly" installed unix. 

As far as I'm aware, none of our makefiles installs the demos anywhere.  
Nor did any of them, ever.

> Using a rpm package for gnuplot ... turns you to demos for an old
> gnuplot.

Huh? That only applies if you look at an old, now outdated RPM, obviously.  
There'll be only *one* binary RPM of gnuplot installed in any given box.  
So far, that'll be the one of 3.7.3 made by the distributor, so yes, it
will have the old version of the demos.

> => ordinary people (who do just "make install" have no demos avaible).

> INSTALL writes ./configure does not want to decide where to put demos --
> why not?

INSTALL says so, and it's written in there for said "ordinary people" to
see.  So they'll know there are demos they may want to install, at a place
of their choosing.  

We can't do anything to help people who won't read README and INSTALL
files, and there's really no point trying.

> /usr/local/share/gnuplot/... gnuplot is already writing there, why not use
> it for demo?

That would be the right place for them to go for a non-RPM local
installation from sources.  I.e. if we make a "install-demos" target, or
have the default 'install' put them up anywhere, $(pkgdatadir)/demo is 
where that'll be.  

But it's not the place the existing binary packages made by third parties
put them.  SuSE Linux, e.g., puts such files below
/usr/share/docs/packages/<name>, not /usr/share/<package>, and they may
prefer to keep it that way.  But since there's no
/usr/local/share/docs/packages in a Linux system, we can't easily
duplicate that, and probably we shouldn't.

And remember that as soon as we put a pointer to the locally installed
copy of the demos into the online help, odds are distributors will manage
to break it.  But it'll likely be us who get the complaints about it.

> BTW, "make install" installs big unstriped binaries, even for the final
> gnuplot 4.0.0. It's not polite for harddisks of our users. I hope no other
> app do that!
> 	Who knows about "make install-strip", and who actually use it?

Those people who care, know.  Those who build RPMs at distributors
included.  OTOH, HD space is less than 0.01 USD or EUR per MB these
days...

It might make sense to mention install-strip in the INSTALL document.

-- 
Hans-Bernhard Broeker (br...@ph...)
Even if all the snow were burnt, ashes would remain.