Hi
That's fine, but how does the user know this? "yum install gtk1" is a very UNIXy sort of command for an end user desktop, isn't it?
thanks -mike
that might very well be resolved through pup for fc4. The question is what kind of error messages do you get from the loki installers if gtk1 is not installed on the system already.
Regards Rahul Sundaram
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On Thu, 07 Apr 2005 06:28:15 -0700, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
The question is what kind of error messages do you get from the loki installers if gtk1 is not installed on the system already.
Good question! Some of them are statically linked with GTK 1.2, I think it's a build time configuration option. I just renamed my copy and ran one Loki Setup, this is what I got:
Gtk-WARNING **: libgtk-1.2.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Gdk-WARNING **: Missing charsets in FontSet creation [other stuff that's probably unrelated snipped]
But the GUI appeared anyway. So I'm not sure what it's doing - trying to use the systems copy and otherwise falling back to a builtin one?
Then I tried another, for the game "Dark Horizons Lore" and it didn't show the GTK UI, but it still "worked" in that it fell back to an ncurses based install.
This was the error: /root/.setup4665: error while loading shared libraries: libgtk-1.2.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Text based installers for games are from the DOS era though. I don't think that should be counted as working.
Mike Hearn wrote:
On Thu, 07 Apr 2005 06:28:15 -0700, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
The question is what kind of error messages do you get from the loki installers if gtk1 is not installed on the system already.
Good question! Some of them are statically linked with GTK 1.2, I think it's a build time configuration option. I just renamed my copy and ran one Loki Setup, this is what I got:
Gtk-WARNING **: libgtk-1.2.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Gdk-WARNING **: Missing charsets in FontSet creation [other stuff that's probably unrelated snipped]
But the GUI appeared anyway. So I'm not sure what it's doing - trying to use the systems copy and otherwise falling back to a builtin one?
Then I tried another, for the game "Dark Horizons Lore" and it didn't show the GTK UI, but it still "worked" in that it fell back to an ncurses based install.
This was the error: /root/.setup4665: error while loading shared libraries: libgtk-1.2.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Text based installers for games are from the DOS era though. I don't think that should be counted as working.
Let me show you what "could" be done for the desktop user, who cannot read terminal output, as he does not use a terminal:
The dynamic loader, which raises "error while loading shared libraries: libgtk-1.2.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory" could send a message on the user's session DBUS with a helper tool (exec "/bin/error-shared-lib-not-found").
A small helper app listens on the user's session DBUS for such a message and presents a gui dialog to the user stating: "Application foo needs the library bar to run.". It can offer the user to search the rpmdb and the internet repos for this file and, if found, to install the appropriate rpm package with all its dependencies.
Just a thought, but quite useful for any unexperienced linux user :)
On Fri, Jun 10, 2005 at 08:59:54AM +0200, Harald Hoyer wrote:
Let me show you what "could" be done for the desktop user, who cannot read terminal output, as he does not use a terminal:
A small helper app listens on the user's session DBUS for such a message and presents a gui dialog to the user stating: "Application foo needs the library bar to run.". It can offer the user to search the rpmdb and the internet repos for this file and, if found, to install the appropriate rpm package with all its dependencies.
Some friendly soul could also start packaging these and putting them in a yum repo :-)
Probably not in the charter of extras, though. You definately don't want to make all this old stuff compile on gcc4, you'll go mad doing that, but some kind of "Works/doesn't conflict with anything in FC4" badge for the rpms would still be nice to have.
Easiest way is probably doing nosrc.rpm's what contain some old RH7.3/9/whatnot era library rpm as the source, then extract only the library bits and don't include the conflicting bits that aren't necessary for running apps. With a pointer to the original source, of course. Acceptable trade-off, as one will only need this to run old proprietary crap anyway :-).
(Or with FC5 open source code that nobody has fixed to work with NPTL *cough* vdr *cough*)
But yea, there's definately a need for a collection of compatibility libraries. The other day I had to run something with a gtk-- 1.2 dependancy. Freshrpms had a rpm for RH9, which worked just fine with FC4 (the software I wanted to run didn't do anything useful, as I had wished, tho :-( )
At some point it's just easier to run an ancient distro in a sandbox making sure it's totally isolated from the outside world so updates aren't that critical.
-
Harald Hoyer -
Mike Hearn -
Pekka Pietikäinen -
Rahul Sundaram