All,
I'm also willing but unenthusiastic about having a Linux flavour to
look after. I was the local admin here a while ago and that cured me
of my one-time interest in messing about with /etc. I've never even
heard of RHEL and Fedora, I'm afraid.
Also, is it strictly necessary that we _support_ all of these different
distriutions? Once everything's robustly buildable from a distributed
source set (or a CVS checkout strictly for the more adventurous), we
can just tell folk:
i) you can build from the source
ii) we build and test on platforms X, Y and Z
iii) if you get it to build on A, B or C, please let us know so we
can reassure folk
iv) if you have to change it, tell us
v) if you give us a binary we'll distribute it
Of course, (i) is the hard bit, but after that's done, other people do
all the rest of the work! And folk probably wouldn't expect any more
than this, so it'd still be a good service to the community.
Given that we do want to keep on distributing binaries, I'd expect
there'd be enough folk who'd be burning to do steps (iv) and (v)
themselves, and who'd be willing to pass on the result, that we'd be
able to offer binaries for a respectably large range of platforms. If
it does come to pass that there's a platform that is simultaneously
popular enough that folk want to download binaries, but that no-one
wants to build for, then surely _that's_ the time to start dishing out
allocations of platforms to people. The only platform where that seems
at all a likely scenario is OS X, and JAC are handling that already
(heroes of modern youth: Tim and Brad!).
See you,
Norman
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Norman Gray http://www.astro.gla.ac.uk/users/norman/
Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow [log in to unmask]
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