[squeak-dev] Packaging of 4.1?

Bert Freudenberg bert at freudenbergs.de
Wed Mar 24 00:43:02 UTC 2010


On 23.03.2010, at 22:46, Michael van der Gulik wrote:
> 
> 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/

Well, if you use the VM from the distro packages, it's just a single zip file for the image and changes, right? No installation necessary. The sources file should be included in that, I agree.

A combined download including the VM might be hard, but maybe it's possible. How do you like the Etoys-To-Go approach? Does it work on your machine?
http://squeakland.org/download/

- Bert -





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