On Sat, 30 Aug 2003, Alasdair Allan wrote:
> > > Doing anything else will continue to support our reputation having
> > > softwre that is "hard to install"...
> >
> > Pardon this totally irrelevant red herring, but have you tried installing
> > AIPS or IRAF !?!? Several managers I've spoken to say how *easy* it is to
> > install the USSC compared to other major astro packages.
>
> I didn't say it was hard to install, I just said that amougst the end
> users, not necessarily the managers, who are no longer our primary market,
> it has the reputation of being hard to install. Plus it requires root
> access, which not everybody has these days...
We do have issues of ease of installation, nevermind how hard anyone
else's installations are, that isn't the real competition. The canonical
Linux install is a local build of ./configure;make; make install, or for
package specific versions "rpm -Uvh" (fill in debian pkg recipe) etc. We
clearly do not meet these "standards" so are always going to take flack.
Happily we do seem to be seriously looking at all this. Perhaps some day
users will port our software the way they do for other Linux stuff. It's a
dream worth some thought.
Peter.
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