On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 5:00 AM, Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de> wrote:
> On 23.03.2010, at 16:13, Chris Muller wrote:
>>
>> Well, I, too, am fairly interested in the topic, but was waiting for
>> some of the other Linux experts to respond so I could learn something!
>> Personally, I find installation of the Linux VM to be a pain in the
>> ass.  In particular, I don't understand why the package is zipped
>> including the full directory structure (from root /), rather than just
>> a flat or the two-layers (lib and bin) that are needed..  Unless I'm
>> missing something, this makes installation of the VM a very manual,
>> multi-step process..
>
> You're supposed to run the INSTALL script. Besides, installing from tarballs is supposed to be painful, to keep people from doing it, unless they in fact know what they are doing ;)
>
> That said, which Linux are you on? The VM might be in the distro already. That would always be the preferable way.

It seems there aren't many Linux users.

I use Ubuntu, but I won't use the VMs that come with the distro
because I usually compile my own. Sometimes I need debugging symbols
in the VM, sometimes I have a few custom changes.

My issues with the way squeak is currently packaged are:

* Like Chris says, the tarball for the Linux VM is odd. I'd prefer it
followed the conventions for tarballed binaries.

* The bits and pieces you need are spread over several downloadable
files. Why can't the VM, image, and sources files all be in the same
downloadable tarball or zip file?

* The image and changes files aren't called "squeak.image" and "squeak.changes".

* There's no Readme.txt file, no installation instructions or anything
when you download "the latest release". You get an image file and a
changes file, and you're expected to know what to do with them.

As a fairly experienced user, I can cope with this, but I feel sorry
for any new users of Squeak.

Gulik.

-- 
http://gulik.pbwiki.com/