FLOSS developers please take note.
I should have called this blog Building software in a desert storm.
The last 8 days have been spent downloading and installing various packages for evaluation and testing. Downloading via modem (no ADSL here – shame on you Telstra) is painful enough but getting them running appears to be almost impossible.
We’re back to dependency hell.
I’m not blaming any individual distribution. They do their very best to bring us up to date and tested packages. The problem is that I’m working with bleeding edge pre version 1.0 software that has yet to be packaged for any of the mainstream operating systems.
Making these programs work is a matter of luck. The developers are busy developing and have little time to document dependencies and therein lies the problem. Without knowing what software is installed on the development system it is a matter of trial and error to get these programs working at all.
A note to open source developers.
If you want help developing, testing and documenting your programs please take the time to keep one page of notes up to date. That page should list all the packages, including their versions, that are required to run your application. The list may change as development continues but at least armed with this list we stand a chance. Without it we may just give up and find an alternative package.