Re: geekyness and ESR's recent tome

GreyGeek wrote:

> The second experience was on my MDK 9.2.1 box at home.
> Download source.
> ./configure gives an error which cannot be resolved without rewriting
> configure.in. Not going that route.

To be honest, this is not a very helpful report, since you don't say what the
error was. I have always been very happy with the speed by which I can build
from source (with various distros). If there is something that you are seeing
with ./configure, tell us so we can fix it.

And to your larger gripe about the relative difficulty with installing on Win32
vs *nix, you have to understand a few things:

1) Subversion is built using very close to bleeding edge code; this will mean
that most distro's will have older packages which will get in the way;

2) Subversion 1.0.0 is just over a week old; the distro repositories are either
still serving up 0.37.0 (or GASP! older);

3) Subversion relies heavily on a very new version of Apache (2.0.48) and
recommends an even newer version of BerkeleyDB (4.2.x); since these programs are
highly integrated parts of most commercial Linux distro's, it will take them a
while to catch up;

4) Lastly, the Win32 distribution of Subversion is free to install all of it's
own dependencies, since none of them are already resident on the system; it is a
much more relaxed installation because everything is able to be installed
without any fear of overwriting existing packages.

It is out of the Subversion developers control how slow or fast any given third
party packager gets a Subversion 1.0.0 RPM released. It is, in my experience
certainly, far easier for the competent sysadmin to compile the few dependencies
manually and install them in parallel with the distro's versions. All you
_need_ is:

A) Neon
B) BerkeleyDB (use 4.2.x or 4.0.x, but stay away from 4.1.x)
C) Apache 2.0.48 (and associated apr/apr-util)
D) Subversion itself

I also don't see what your specific difficulty is at work; you say:

1) You are happy with the Win32 install;
2) You have a completely Win32 shop;
3) You don't want to teach them Unix.

My suggestion to you is simple: install the Win32 tools on the desktops and (if
you want) install a Linux server for them to hit. QED

John

-- 
John Peacock
Director of Information Research and Technology
Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group
4501 Forbes Boulevard
Suite H
Lanham, MD  20706
301-459-3366 x.5010
fax 301-429-5748
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