[Ifeffit] Fink for Mac OS X and debian for Linux (was: new versions of my programs)

[Paul Fons]

When I mentioned fink, I was never thinking of replacing the binary 
installer, rather just making it easier for the people not afraid to 
click a compile button to have the latest version compiled from source. 
For instance, the latest version of aquaterm does have a cursor ... and 
is part of fink!  The idea would be for it to be trivial for someone 
who has fink installed to graduate to the latest version.  As I am 
hacking around anyway trying to get things to work in fink, I thought 
it would be nice if someone else could easily update their systems more 
easily.  It is possible incidentally to do binary installs using Fink.  
The idea is just to make it trivial for someone to install the latest 
version without worrying about the details that someone else has 
already worried about.

Actually I like the sound of what Matt was describing, but I don't 
grasp all of the details.  One of the largest benefits of fink (and I 
assume Debian is the same idea) is that Fink keeps track of 
dependencies and can offer to upgrade the dependent packages if 
necessary. How would this work with the binary installer bit?  I assume 
the basic idea is that the binary installer would install a complete 
working package and that fink could offer to upgrade that package.  
This would seem to conflict (or at least potentially conflict) with the 
package management feature of fink.

In any case the idea would not be to replace the binary installer for 
those who don't want to bother with the hassle of compiling things, but 
for those who are willing but just don't know enough about the process 
to do it themselves to get the latest source code release running.  I 
believe currently, using my installation of horae, ifeffit and friends, 
Bruce's script works "out of the box".  I have installed horae and 
ifeffit on a friend's machine which works nicely using the fink 
installed packages (but not using fink itself for the installation 
yet).  On my own machine, I have upgraded to the latest version of 
perl, etc. and things are a little more complicated (but not much).

I was just curious to see if anyone else would be interested in a fink 
based installation (with all of its pitfalls and warts) as in principle 
it would be only a small amount of extra work to take what I am doing 
to keep my horae updated and pass it along to others.  On the other 
hand, if there is not interest, there is no point.  If there is a 
hybrid solution like the one Matt mentioned that would be optimal it 
seems to me (more thinking/discussion required).  Do try the latest 
version of aquaterm though, it is nice to have things resize on demand!

									Paul


On 2004/04/20, at 6:45, Carlo U. Segre wrote:

>
> I can see both sides.  It is important to have ease of installation so
> that the programs can be disseminated to more users.  This will help 
> the
> development process.  That being said, it is important to have a 
> committed
> group to keep up to date with the sources so that everyone is talking
> about the same versions and can benefit from the latest improvements.
>
> I suspect taht once the horae software reaches an advanced version 
> number,
> issues like this will become less important as stability in the basic 
> code
> is reached.
>
> Carlo
>
> On Mon, 19 Apr 2004, Bruce Ravel wrote:
>
>> On Monday 19 April 2004 05:11 pm, Jeff Terry wrote:
>>> It's also so unmac-like to force users to compile from scratch.
>>
>> I acknowledge that this was said with tongue in cheek.  Still, I
>> cannot come up with the right language to express how extremely little
>> being "mac-like" matters to me.
>>
>> That said, I think that I neglected to mention a few of the underlying
>> assumptions of my last posting.
>>
>> Assumption #1: My codes have bugs.  Some of them get in the way of
>>  getting work done.
>>
>> Assumption #2: I am constantly working on fixing the problems in my
>>  codes.  That is a good thing.
>>
>> Assumption #3: People would prefer to avail themselves of code that
>>  fixes serious bugs in the timeliest manner possible because it is
>>  better to use code with fewer bugs than code with more bugs.
>>
>> I maintain the source code package continuously.  Thus, the fastest
>> way to disseminate bug fixes to end users is in the form of source
>> code.  This has the additional advantage of not requiring the
>> additional and probably time consuming step of building and verifying
>> a binary package.
>>
>> But I am not the sort to pass judgement on a culture that I am not a
>> part of.  If doing things the "Macintosh way" takes priority over
>> doing anaylsis with code which has fewer bugs, than that is just fine
>> with me.
>>
>> B
>>
>>
>>
>
> -- 
> Carlo U. Segre -- Professor of Physics
> Associate Dean for Special Projects, Graduate College
> Illinois Institute of Technology
> Voice: 312.567.3498            Fax: 312.567.3494
> Carlo.Segre at iit.edu    http://www.iit.edu/~segre
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>
>
Dr. Paul Fons
Senior Researcher
National Institute for Advanced Industrial Science & Technology
METI
Center for Applied Near-Field Optics Research (CANFOR)
AIST Central 4, Higashi 1-1-1
Tsukuba, Ibaraki JAPAN 305-8568

tel. +81-298-61-5636
fax. +81-298-61-2939

email: paul-fons at aist.go.jp

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