Garry R. Osgood wrote:
> Robin Rowe wrote:
>
> Are the FreeBSD, Solaris, IRIX and OS/2 efforts truly internal to GIMP,
Yes. In theory, at least. However, we do suffer from a lack of
developers on those platforms, so it's possible to get into the
"all the world's a VAX" syndrome... the Win32 developers keep us
somewhat honest (while at the same time we occasionally need to
keep them honest). In principle, no code which breaks a build on
any of the above platforms (with the possible exception of OS/2)
should ever get checked in. Platform-specific stuff should be at
an absolute minimum in the gimp code - where it's required, we
try to conform to standards (POSIX first, SvR4 and BSD second).
> the freeware volunteers at SGI build gimp packages from sources originating from the same
> gnome repository the gimp developers here support, but employ the SGI software packager,
Similarly, the GIMP is available on Sun's Freeware site in the
pkgadd format, on RedHat's ftp server as an RPM, on Debian as a
dpkg, and so on.
> It would be nice if we tell people to where they may find more exotic binaries, such as for SGI,
> and give such folks a few thank-you's every now and then. Mea culpa. Hopefully this note
> will correct some of that.
That would be nice. There are so many platforms and file formats out
there, though, that keeping track might be difficult. Who's
built the GIMP on Fujitsu SvR4 Unix for example? Or on a Bull?
The source, and decent coding practices that minimise unportable
code, and source code distribution is the way to go. If, as a
service to users, we provide binaries on the gimp.org site for
the 2 or 3 most popular platforms, this doesn't mean that the
other platforms matter less, it probably means that the website
maintainer has access to binaries for the most common platforms
:)
Cheers,
Dave.
--
David Neary,
Marseille, France
E-Mail: bolsh@xxxxxxxx
