On Sun, 2010-05-16 at 17:10 +0100, Phil Rhodes wrote: > > When posting to this list you must always, always, use the last SVN > > version, > > I must point out (as I often do when this comes up) that this instruction is > impossible to follow for anyone who is not a fairly advanced software > engineer. Creating a build environment sufficient to compile mplayer is > often glossed over as trivial, which is very much not the case, especially > on platforms other than Linux. I will preempt criticism by adding the > following points: I agree that setting up a build environment can be difficult, and many of the "compile latest" comments look like knee-jerk reactions in cases where the problem description gives no reason to believe the version used is a factor. OTOH I don't think it's practical to fully support old versions, and the primary responsibility for distro versions that are many months old should be on the distros. > If the open source community spent as much time making software easy to use > as they spend claiming it is easy to use, it probably WOULD be easy to use. Builds and distro maintenance should be primarily done by the people creating the distros though. They have the responsibility for creating binary builds, and either keeping those up to date or providing support for older versions themselves if they can't. It's better if people doing development concentrate on improving the latest code rather than dealing with past versions.
