Re: [Visualpython-users] re: Distributiion

[Andy D. <dou...@la...>]

Just to chime in ---

I think Bruce & co. are doing a great job.  It is indeed difficult to
install on anything other than systems just like the developers have, but
it's getting a lot better a lot faster.

Speaking from long experience, I can attest that managing a free software
program is a *lot* of work.  Managing it in coordination with other
rapidly-changing free software[*] is a lot more work squared.  The more we
other users can help out with advice for fellow users and with patches,
the more time the developers can spend on the core visual module.

-- 
    Andy Dougherty		dou...@la...
    Dept. of Physics
    Lafayette College, Easton PA 18042

[*]For example, consider the (trimmed) output of 
$ ldd cvisualmodule.so 
        libgtk-1.2.so.0 
        libgdk-1.2.so.0 
        libgmodule-1.2.so.0 
        libgthread-1.2.so.0 
        libglib-1.2.so.0 
        libpthread.so.0 
        libdl.so.2 
        libXi.so.6 
        libXext.so.6 
        libX11.so.6 
        libGL.so.1 
        libgtkgl.so.5 
        libstdc++-libc6.2-2.so.3 
        libm.so.6 
        libc.so.6 
        libSM.so.6 
        libICE.so.6 
        libGLU.so.1 
        /lib/ld-linux.so.2 

A number of those libraries are still in fairly rapid development with
at least occasional incompatible changes.  Couple that with the huge
variety of Linux installations and distributions and with the
ever-evolving nature of Linux itself, stir in Python evolution for good
measure, and you've potentially got a very big mess.