[Ardour-Users] Compiling Ardour ?

[John Emmas]

I couldn't agree more, Paul.  You probably remember the horrendous problems
I had with Ubuntu, which was forever "upgrading" things for me (whether
I wanted the upgrades or not!)

Since then, I've learned that the key to leading a quiet life with Linux is
to get it stable and then leave it alone (but I suppose the same could be
said for most OS's).

John



----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Davis" <paul at linuxaudiosystems.com>
To: "John Emmas" <johne53 at tiscali.co.uk>
Cc: <ardour-users at lists.ardour.org>
Sent: 27 January 2008 14:47
Subject: Re: [Ardour-Users] Compiling Ardour ?


> On Sun, 2008-01-27 at 13:03 +0000, John Emmas wrote:
> > The thing that hampers smooth, scaled changes in Linux is that it
depends on
> > lots of underlying technologies which are mostly being developed by
private
> > individuals working at their own pace and to their own timescales.  When
a
> > major component changes, at least some of the developers who depend on
that
> > component need to stop what they're doing and turn their attention to
> > compatibility issues.  This in turn, can create further compatibility
issues
> > which result in the constant flurry of upgrades about which you first
> > complained.  It's very different from the situation with Apple or
> > Microsoft - where major changes can be kept "in house" until the company
> > feels ready to release them.
>
> I don't think this is really as much of a factor as you think. If you
> (or a piece of software that you use) tracks the development version of
> another package, then this is real issue and I think your analysis is
> correct. But its not necessary to do this, and in fact most of the
> notable Linux distributions don't do it either. I still run FC5 on my
> dual opteron box, and the only reason I have for upgrading at present is
> so that the stock version of rhythmbox would have cover art support :)
> Fedora doesn't upgrade FC5 anymore, and even when they did, it wasn't to
> track major changes in various libraries - that is what leads to FC6, 7
> etc. As others have noted, and as I just did, you don't *need* to
> upgrade.
>
> With ardour itself, we have tried (in general) to avoid releasing
> versions that require packages of other libraries that are way ahead of
> where we percieve the current "norm" to be. This can be hard on people
> who are running distros that are more than, say, 2 years old, since it
> turns out that they really do need a newer version of libXYZ to run the
> software. This doesn't seem out of the norm for me - there is a lot of
> stuff on Windows that requires upgrades in this way. I still remember
> when Win98 came out *without* USB support and then a later service pack
> added it. Within a very short period of time, there was a flood of
> software and devices that all required the service pack. I believe the
> same is happening right now on Vista, with changes to the audio system
> being required by more and more "Vista-native" pro-audio apps (at least,
> thats what i recall the CTO of Cakewalk explaining).
>
> I do agree with you that if you watch the "raw level" of linux
> development, that its looks chaotic, untimed and can be very hard to
> follow. But this is what "distributions" are there to "hide", and its a
> large part of why I originally switched to using a distro that had most
> or all of the libraries I wanted/needed available from a repository
> rather than requiring me to fetch the source (what source? which
> version?) and build it.
>
> --p
>
>
>
>