2013/7/12 Darrell Anderson
BTW, the build notes wiki hasn't been reviewed by a newcomer in a long time. Please offer improvements and critiques. :-)
Darrell
Hi Darrel
I've been busy with my work, but here is a quick and dirty review of the HOWTO BUILD wiki; it's based on my own selfish desires and my delusion of what I was expecting to find there, It's a 2 part review:
--- There are way to many notes, really, I stopped reading them after the 4th the first time I got there!
--- Prerequisites: Didn't really mention them, only say something about cmake and autotools.
What about saying, when building in Debian based distributions you will need at least: aptitude install mesa3d-dev libpng-dev gcc g++ make
On RedHat based distributions: yum install bla bla bla
The "distribution specific build information" doesn't list the packages needed either.
--- Probably only one mention of something like this would be enough:
The compilation will be either with autotools or cmake, please refer to package_name/INSTALL for build instructions on each package.
I'm used to checking either INSTALL or BUILDING when I don't see a configure script :)
--- How about something like: At the moment PREFIX=/opt/trinity must be exported before installing some packages (like tqtinterface), please check package/INSTALL for details.
And put package specific compilation options and instructions inside the README file, for example, there is no mention of --enable-closure inside tdeadmin.
---
Regenerate Autoconf/Automake files
This kind of stuff should be inside each package's README or BUILDING; applies for cmake too!
---
- Install
make install || exit 1
A little too short to deserve a whole section don't you think?
Also, that exit 1 might scare those that forget to do it as root, *cough* or didn't read the whole manual *cough*
---
- Build Order
Finally! I'm told 2 different ways of compiling, I'm given a bunch of configuration flags and finally I know what to compile first :D
Now I need to find how to compile again because I forgot D:
---
None of these Trinity libraries are required but all provide...
Wait, what? what are doing another 2 dependency lists here?
---
This is not a complete list. Please help with updating the list!
Interesting, here is the list of packages I need to install before compiling :)
I must say the first time I didn't read this far.
You could also say whether to build each package with cmake or autotools (and link to the section)
---
- Build Times
I think this would be a good place to specify which packages support parallel building ;)
Proposed wiki layout ====================
Introduction ------------ TDE is a continuation/fork/whatever of the old KDE3 desktop, it has been made so that it can coexist with other desktops like Gnome, XFCE and specially KDE4; this was achieved by renaming the TDE files.
Prerequisites ------------- Packages! And probably some exports like qt3 path and stuff.
Getting the sources ------------------- You can get the latest stable release at http://... Or you can get the latest development source using git clone...
*Building the bare minimum desktop* ------------------------------ _Ordered_ package specific build instructions to get a shiny new TDE desktop listing the currently installed kde4, gnome and xfce4 apps.
Installing the apps ------------------- Instructions for compiling non-essential stuff like gwenview, amarok, kontact, etc. that some may desire but some may not (like those comfortable with Amarok2).
Pimping the desktop ------------------- Compiling superkaramba, kdm and other set of goodies.
I really appreciate the effort you are doing guys, sorry if I sounded mean, it wasn't my intention.
Cheers Ismael
-- Do not let me induce you to satisfy my curiosity, from an expectation, that I shall gratify yours. What I may judge proper to conceal, does not concern myself alone.