docu update

[Marcus Meissner]

On Sat, Jun 19, 2004 at 03:01:31PM -0400, Geoff Thorpe wrote:
> On June 19, 2004 01:37 pm, Alexandre Julliard wrote:
> > > way towards cutting the number of non-developers building from source
> > > down to zero.
> >
> > I don't see why that should be a goal at all. You guys need to get rid
> > of the mindset that building from source is some 1337 thing that mere
> > mortals are not supposed to do. There are plenty of legitimate reasons
> > for users to build from source, and we need to make sure it works for
> > them. That's why for instance the configure script is checked into
> > CVS; it is of course heresy to put generated files in CVS, but it lets
> > users build without having to fight the autoconf tools. It's for the
> > same reason that we have wineinstall. Of course I'm all for improving
> > the binary packages, but it doesn't avoid the need to also support
> > source builds.
> 
> Excellent, I'm glad this was said. One only has to look at the swing away 
> from binary-distributions as a case in point - people *want* to eliminate 
> unknown layers of patches, packaging, and divergence from the "real" 
> thing. The original source, as distributed from the project itself, is 
> the only sure way to get the same version of the code that is used (and 
> thus, tested) by its authors. It is also the only way to know it tried to 
> adapt itself appropriately to your system. Anything else involves a 
> certain blind faith in the black-magic of distribution patching by people 
> who are usually *not* authors of the upstream packages. Moreover, unless 
> you pay for commercial support then you are pretty much obliged to use 
> the unmodified upstream code if you want to have a meaningful discussion 
> with other users/devs about problems or questions you encounter.
> 
> Hardly any win32 application runs 100% perfectly under Wine (hell, the 
> same can be said on MS-Windows), and Wine is not yet a complete work 
> (again, a shared characteristic with the "reference implementation"). 
> Under these circumstances, the path of least resistance is surely to 
> *encourage* users to be singing out of the same hymn book as the 
> development community? I've tried binary wine packages on a few occasions 
> and *always* had major problems. Wine, and more importantly the things 

Did you report those problems?

For SUSE packages I would like to know.

Btw, my package mostly does
	./configure
	make
	make install

The number of to-patche things (for automatic configuration) has been
reduced greatly over the last years.

Ciao, Marcus