On Fri, 22 Aug 2003 13:15:57 +0200, Thierry Vignaud <tvignaud@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Another reason may be that it is difficult to build the development > > version because it depends on released versions of some libraries that > > are not included yet in the major GNU/Linux distributions (e.g., GTK+ > > version 2.2.2). > > both debian unstable, mandrake and redhat provides gtk+2.x for quite a > long time. The current GIMP requires GTK+ 2.2.0 and recommends 2.2.2 (this will be required by the next version). Unfortunately, many users of the distributions mentioned above are still using GTK+ 2.0.x, not 2.2.x. Besides, the majority of the users are not using the latest version of their distribution. > there's no problem in providing both gtk+-1.2.x and gtk+-2.x in a > distro. Of course. This is what has allowed many users to experiment with the latest GIMP while still being able to work with the stable version based on GTK+ 1.x. > > Also, the number of dependencies for GIMP 1.3.x is much higher than > > the number of dependencies for GIMP 1.2.x, so it is more difficult > > to have a working build environment for the 1.3.x version. > > this is a valid point for: > - users of very old distributions > - non developer users (that is most end users) > - windows users (for which getting both a working development suit and > enough knowledge to build something with required dependancies is > probably not easy) This is not only about "users of very old distributions." The world is not only Linux and Windows, and the Linux world is not only made of binary distributions. I am typing this from a Solaris machine on which I had to build all GIMP dependencies from sources. Assuming that a system has at least some basic tools such as make and a compiler, building GIMP 1.3.x adds 27 dependencies (or 32 if you are a developer who also needs libtool, autoconf, etc.) Compare this with GIMP 1.2.x, which had only 11 dependencies (or 14 for developers.) > > Do we need binary distributions? [...] > you can either: > - leave it to distributions (after all gimp-1.3 is already provided in > mandrake contribs and in debian unstable) > - leave it to a nightly build system (see mozilla) > - leave it to another specialized team (aka you need one people that > sometimes build windows binaries and someone who sometimes build > static gimp for linux) There are actually two issues: the creation of the binaries and their distribution. Building the binaries can be done by a nightly build system or by a dedicated team. But we would probably have to generate a large number of binaries: - If we build Linux binaries, there is a risk that they conflict with the packages supported by the distribution. We have to decide if the installation prefix is /usr, /usr/local, /opt/gnome or some other path. - We would have to provide RPM and Debian packages as well as some tarballs. - Although this is getting a bit better now, different RPM-based distributions are using different naming conventions for the packages on which the GIMP depends (e.g. Red Hat vs. SuSE). - What about Solaris, MacOS X, IRIX, AIX and others? Even if we could create the binary packages, I don't think that we should distribute them from the GIMP web site. This means that we would get support questions for these binaries. We already get some distribution-specific bug reports from time to time, but we can usually divert them to a more appropriate place. Supporting the binaries is not something that most developers would enjoy doing. So it is better if someone else can take care of building and distributing binaries for us. This can be a Linux distributor or some individual who puts the binaries on his web site (like it is currently done for the Windows version). We would be glad to link to these sites from the GIMP web site, but it is better to avoid hosting any binaries on www.gimp.org. > > Is Bugzilla too hard to use for new users? [...] > even if bug reporting by mail may not look suitable, being able to > anwser bugzilla by mail is a must. > it saves quite a lot of time and is often see as more easy to use by > developers (at least here at mdk). As far as I am concerned (I spend several hours per week on Bugzilla), I don't think that answering Bugzilla by mail would really save time. For every third or fourth bug to which I respond, I do a Bugzilla query to find related bugs. Since I use the web interface for queries, I don't think that I would save much time by using e-mail for the other bugs. -Raphaël -- eviv bulgroz!
