Please, oh please, help us maintain your applications …

May 1, 2009 · Posted in Linux

Ok, this is getting really annoying lately…

{kde,qt}-apps.org are the places that I m “monitoring” for cool applications. Some of them are hitting the portage as well.

The first thing that anybody(?) would do, is to download the source tarball and try to build and use the application. A proper ( or common if you like ) build system is the following:

./configure or qmake

make <-build the sources

make install  <-install the binaries etc

However, many many many apps dont have a ‘make install’ step. Is this so bad? It depends of course. Someone could easily say : “Why are you making this such a big deal? Just put the binary on /usr/bin (using dobin or whatever ) and you are done.”

Sure, this is a nice way to install an application. But, what if the application uses stuff like images, translations, documentations, guides, etc etc etc from the current directory? Oh boy this is fun! As you understand , installing just the binary under /usr/bin is not enough. The application would be b0rked since it wont be able to detect images,docs etc. The binary is searching the “.” (current) directory for all those stuff. That is /usr/bin. WHAT!!?!?? o_O

Apparently this application follows the “Download the tarball, unpack it on your $HOME, compile it , use it” path.

So, upstream guys, note that not every user knows how to download and compile sources. Many many users dont even visit {qt,kde}-apps.org to find new applications. They just open the {synaptics,portage,pacman,yum} and install the packages via the PMS. You need to understand that many many users could use your applications and provide vital feedback if you could follow a standar way to build and install your packages.

We (as in maintainers) cannot always patch and fix the build systems. The patches are usually big,complicated and they dont apply on the next version. it is yoursresponsibility to fix the build system. Many developers ( including me of course ) wont bother spend all this time to fix it for ya…

Tags: build, packages, upstream

Comments

4 Responses to “Please, oh please, help us maintain your applications …”

Ben on May 1st, 2009 11:28 pm

Amen!
foo on May 2nd, 2009 4:06 pm

I have built/packaged tons of software for my ex-distro (Slackware) and I feel your pain. Dear upstream people, a non-standard reduces exposure to *your* app, it is unfair for your useful code.
mperedim on May 2nd, 2009 6:23 pm

Why would you feel the need to maintain (as a packager) such applications? I’d very much prefer from my distro to have a rock solid base (as far as you’re concerned qt, kde-* 4.x etc) rather than every silly/shiny/whatever application out there.
Markos on May 2nd, 2009 6:41 pm

Cause some of them are really good and it is shame not to have them in our repositories. This is why I am “pushing” upstream to follow a standar build system. I can hack and fix some of them but others require heavy changes which no one maintainer is willing to do :\