Re: SEUL: Distribution of applications

[Roger R Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

In message <199801132115.QAA01585@buddy.rit.edu>, lso8219@cs.rit.edu writes:
>> I might be stating the obvious here, but when you buy MS-Office (not
>> that I have), you don't recieve several hundred megabytes of source
>> code.
>> 
>>  I have nothing against source code being distributed for free, but
>> shouldn't the seul project be encouraging apps to have a pre-compiled
>> version that can be configured (for most purposes) from a config file
>> instead of having to recompile. I personally would like to just be able
>> to download a ready-to-go compiled version of applications.
>
>Ideally, I have little problem with binary-only distribution, but many unix
>programs have compile time options that need to be changed from system to
>system.  A prime example is ghostscript... Also, under unix, compiling a app
>locally usually custom-fits it to your system... 
>
>Comments? Suggestions?
>
>Loren

Well, RPM and other packagers install binaries. As for compile-time options,
the whole point of a distribution like SEUL is that all the binaries are
already custom-fit to the system, because we set everything up to work well
together. People will get source if they want to futz with things, but there
should be no reason why they will *have* to do this. If a program requires
compile-time configuration to work correctly (I'm told postgreSQL works
this way, for deciding what db interface modules to use), then we have a
problem. Ideally, we'd pick a configuration that will be acceptable for
most people, and if that doesn't work well enough either provide a front-end
for reconfiguring it, or pick a different application that has more friendly
behavior? I dunno.

--Roger