[Visualpython-users] New Linux installer

[Bruce S. <bas...@un...>]

At http://vpython.org is a new source-based installer for Linux (and
possibly some flavors of Unix) created by Jonathan Brandmeyer, an
engineering student at North Carolina State University. This installer uses
the powerful autoconfig machinery, which attempts to determine the details
of the particular Linux/Unix environment and creates a suitable make file
for the particular environment.

It has had enough testing to imply that it is better than what we had
before, but we much appreciate feedback from Linux/Unix users as to whether
it works for them, and/or how it fails. Unfortunately we have not yet been
successful in using it to install on Mac OSX 10.2, where for some reason it
fails to resolve something associated with gtkglarea. Sigh.

The older installer, aimed especially at RedHat 7.0 but used with some other
Linux situations is still available, with a link of the new installer page.

Thanks, Jonathan!

I should mention that we were stimulated by Arthur Siegel's experiments to
investigate various alternatives, especially including distutils. We found
that distutils just doesn't have enough power and capability to handle the
wide range of Linux/Unix environments, at least with the current
implementation of Visual in C++ with dependencies on CXX.

Bruce Sherwood