YDL in Mac OS X Hints today

[John C. Welch]

On 2/29/04 9:30 AM, "Stefan Bruda" <bruda@cs.ubishops.ca> wrote:

 
>> yum and apt-get are marvelous! They are great for installation of that
>> subset of programs that are available to them. For anything outside that
>> universe, it is chaos.
> 
> I have never understood why people are shy when it comes from
> compiling from sources.  I agree that the RPM-ed version of many
> applications is ancient, that's why about half of my applications are
> built from sources.  Except for the odd package now and then the build
> process implies typing ./configure; make; make install and that's it.

Um...because perhaps people just want to install their applications?

This is the biggest issue that Linux has with it's perennial quest to win
the desktop. "./configure, make, make install is as easy as an installer."
well, not to someone who's not a geek. Especially if you have to resolve
dependencies yourself. Unfortunately, there are too many Linux coders out
there who won't do the last bit of work to wrap their code in an installer.
But really, to the non-geek segment, if you have to do more than double
click and follow a few lame prompts, it's not easy.

john

-- 
John C. Welch         Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com              Mac and other opinions
jwelch@bynkii.com