Exactly, Greg... I've tried several distros and it is not uncommon using either an rpm or a tarball to run into missing dependencies. The proper course is to locate those required files (http://www.google.com is an excellent search engine), install them and then recompile. Also, it is clearly stated in the YaST help when one can install gccfront and when one shouldn't. JLK Greg Thomas wrote:
On Tue, 15 Feb 2000, Paul W. Abrahams wrote:
Philipp Thomas wrote:
As I stated above, those that compile programs themself are expected to know enough to handle possible problems and/or failures.
That might be a reasonable assumption if the SuSE distribution were all-inclusive, but it isn't and there's no hope that it ever will be. Just look at how many references there are in threads in this group to programs that one can pick up from the Net or from other sources. Most Linux programs are distributed in source form (the ones that come with SuSE aside), and users are expected to be able to compile those programs themselves.
I agree that we can't expect SuSE to provide support for software that SuSE hasn't distributed. But a couple of pages in the manual on dealing with external software, with whatever disclaimers you might want to attach, would be exceedingly useful. Just look at how many posts there are about problems that people have as the result of having the wrong version of a compiler or library installed.
You're just opening a huge can of worms. A few extra pages are not going to give the subject enough attention and no distro can possibly cover everything in their manual anyway. A few pages here, a few pages there, and soon the only thing the folks at SuSE or any other distribution are doing is writing the manual.
All that I expect from a distro is that I can install the software that comes with the distro and my system will run. Once I start downloading source or binaries from other places I am not going to bother the distro folks. And that goes for any distro.
Greg
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