Re: Making demo programs more evident...

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

On Sun, 9 May 2004, Daniel J Sebald wrote:

> I think the additional method requiring installing demos isn't so bad. 
>  That is, a separate "make install-demos" which would require some 
> interaction (i.e., specifying the exact directory, the "make 
> install-demos" would automagically define GNUPLOT_LIB and add the demo 
> directory to it) 

But 'make install' can't do that.  Modifying the user's environment
variables is way out of scope of a simple program installation.  The best
you could do would be to display a comment as part of running 'make
install' that reminds the user this should be done.  Or make that note
part of 'help demo' (to be written).

> would be something only run by the distributors. 

Distributors already install the demos, generally.  They're not really the
parties we're worried about here.  That'd rather be the persons building
and installing gnuplot from sources.

> >It might make sense to mention install-strip in the INSTALL document.
> >
> 
> I assume that non-stripped is the default because developers want to do 
> debugging?  

Not quite --- we would have the sources and a non-installed, un-stripped
binary for that.  The original reasoning goes back to Mr. Stallman
himself, who insists on having at least minimal debugging capabilities in
installed programs.  I.e. if a user reports a strange problem, on hardware
we have no access to ourselves, the default un-stripped installation
allows us to walk him through a debugger session and show us a backtrace.

It's all written down somewhere in the GNU Coding Standards, I think.

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