<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 5:55 PM Troy A. Griffitts <<a href="mailto:scribe@crosswire.org">scribe@crosswire.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div>
<p>Has anyone tried any of the packaging tools based on containers,
like flatpak?<br></p></div></blockquote><div>Is that how those are implemented? I was curious but hadn't taken the time to look under the hood.</div><div><br></div><div>Someone in the Xiphos world looked into one of them (Snap, I believe) and noticed a few shortcomings for a good experience. Namely, Xiphos stores data in ~/.xiphos (and ~/.sword, following Sword's defaults) and doesn't honor either command-line flags or environment variables to change those. This was incompatible with Snap's architecture which sandboxes the application and apparently prevents access to that part of the filesystem, or something like that? I was never sure of the specifics, but the result was an inability to install modules or save Xiphos configuration options. Neither of these issues is insurmountable, but it isn't one that's been tackled right now.<br></div><div><br></div><div>The above is from memory, so it might be off on the details a little, but it indicated that someone was trying. Flatpak is, of course, the version that's supported most widely (and natively by Fedora and Gnome).</div><div><br></div><div>--Greg<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div><p>
</p>
<div>On 5/13/20 3:30 PM, Michael H wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div style="font-family:garamond,serif;font-size:large">On Ubuntu,
I've gone to PPA version for LibreOffice... which is a newer
version than was released under Ubuntu 18 LTS. However, it's
not as easy to go to PPA for sword apps because there are more
interactions with dependencies between
the sword engine, gnome, etc. <br>
<br>
Back in 2002 to 04 time frame: I was trying to build for
palmOS, and ran into this dependencies won't line up, i need
multiple minor revisions of the same thing to make everything
work. I and ended up getting somebody to "staticly compile"
apps for me on the linux side, so my work on palm wouldn't be
falling into dependency gap. It increases the size of the
package, but no longer depends on anything outside the
package. In today's environment of massive amounts of RAM and
disk space, i don't see why any 'application' on linux doesn't
do this... pulling in the libraries and having an extra copy
of them makes them far more stable, and it makes them run
quicker. It does consume more memory and disk space, but the
days when there was any risk of running out of ram or disk
space on desktops are into double digits gone by. </div>
</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 4:39
PM Greg Hellings <<a href="mailto:greg.hellings@gmail.com" target="_blank">greg.hellings@gmail.com</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr">
<div dir="ltr"><br>
</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Wed, May 13, 2020 at
4:28 PM Tom Sullivan <<a href="mailto:info@beforgiven.info" target="_blank">info@beforgiven.info</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">Greg:<br>
<br>
The repositories do not contain the latest versions. For
example, the <br>
Debian Buster repository presents Xiphos 4.1, not the
latest 4.2.<br>
</blockquote>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>1) This is the benefit and curse of Debian. It
refuses to let new versions of packages in that are not
bugfix and ONLY bugfix. Nothing with new features at all
is allowed into a stable/released version of Debian.
It's a benefit to users who need the stability (read:
server administrators and people who develop software
for running on those stable versions of Debian) but it's
a terrible experience for end users. If you're using
Debian anything (other than sid, their testing release)
for an end-user desktop, then you're going to have a bad
experience.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>2) This is, again, an issue with the distro, and not
with Crosswire or Xiphos. There is nothing we can do to
affect upstream's release cadence and rules. Now, if the
Xiphos project had enough developer manpower to maintain
patches to the 4.1 series as well as continue
development towards 4.2, then maybe we'd be able to get
a 4.1.1 and 4.1.2 into old Debian versions. That's what
large projects do (like Debian itself), but we just
don't have the developer bandwidth to maintain multiple
branches on any of our software. But none of our
software is intended for server, long-lived boxes,
either. It's all end user focused stuff.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"> <br>
That is how I ended up reporting bugs that had been
fixed. It is a wide <br>
problem; I mention Xiphos, not as a bad example, but
because I happened <br>
to remember the version numbers.<br>
</blockquote>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>The same would be true of Sword. 1.8.1 is not just a
bugfix release of the 1.8 series. It introduced some
minor new functionality so, technically, it would not
have been permitted into the Debian repository if anyone
was checking closely. This is just how we handle our
software, again, because we lack the manpower to keep
multiple development streams flowing.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I would, again, submit that your issue is actually
with your chosen distribution. Its documentation appears
to be inadequate, and it's lulled you into using a
distribution that's not targeting your use case. You
might try running Fedora (or Ubuntu and not staying on
LTS versions) which have much more generous update
policies. I can tell you, for instance, that Xiphos
compiles very nicely on current Fedora versions with a
few very simple commands. I happen to know this because
I maintain both our Xiphos CI process and the packages
in the repositories for Xiphos. Now, I haven't updated
the packages to 4.2.1 yet, for Xiphos, because I was
busy helping with the CI and the release of 4.2.1, but
due to the CI I know that compiling for Fedora 32 will
be a breeze.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Compiling for Ubuntu is a little more of a challenge,
because of the missing dependencies, but Caleb is
working on create a dedicated repository on Ubuntu's
infrastructure just for that. And Caleb, myself, Dom,
and Karl are all working to resolve those issues so
that, in the future, a 4.3 or 4.4 will be able to make
it back into the Debian repos and eventually into the
Ubuntu "universe" repositories.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>So maybe give us a shot, still, on a distro that's
meant for you? :)</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>--Greg<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"> <br>
Tom<br>
<br>
Tom Sullivan<br>
<a href="mailto:info@BeForgiven.INFO" target="_blank">info@BeForgiven.INFO</a><br>
FAX: 815-301-2835<br>
---------------------<br>
<br>
On 5/13/20 5:21 PM, Greg Hellings wrote:<br>
> <br>
> <br>
> On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 3:57 PM Tom Sullivan <<a href="mailto:info@beforgiven.info" target="_blank">info@beforgiven.info</a> <br>
> <mailto:<a href="mailto:info@beforgiven.info" target="_blank">info@beforgiven.info</a>>>
wrote:<br>
> <br>
> Y'all:<br>
> <br>
> First, I recognize that as a writer and long
retired developer and<br>
> engineer (and thus obsolete) that in terms of
technical issues, I am<br>
> way<br>
> out of my league with all you C++ programmers
and experts.<br>
> <br>
> Second, I want to thank all of you for your
hard work. Compared to what<br>
> is available for Windows and Mac users,
available Bible software and<br>
> tools are sparse. You work as volunteers and on
a shoestring budget.<br>
> Very many thanks. Without your work, I would be
back to books and paper<br>
> without being able to search, compare versions,
etc., with such ease.<br>
> Linux users are definitely an under served
people group and you fill a<br>
> big need.<br>
> <br>
> Some of you may remember my SwordHammer
project. Frankly, it has<br>
> crashed<br>
> and burned. Due to an architecture decision
that was not the best, it<br>
> became unwieldy. And now, due to changes in my
life, I cannot continue,<br>
> though I had started on a new architecture.
This has two consequences:<br>
> 1. There probably is not any longer reason to
continue on this list<br>
> much<br>
> longer.<br>
> 2. I got an appreciation for the huge problem
caused by incompatible<br>
> Linux distros. For example, I did not know that
Ubuntu users were<br>
> limited to sudo, instead of being able to run
as root.<br>
> <br>
> Many of my previous interactions with this list
have been caused by my<br>
> use of obsolete versions. I cannot help it. I
seem only able to install<br>
> packages from the Debian repository (or
download a *.deb suitable for<br>
> Debian Buster and install). I recently tried to
compile and install<br>
> Sword (which worked), BibleTime (which
crashed), and Xiphos (which I<br>
> was<br>
> not able to compile by various tries.) There
are errors in the docs,<br>
> and<br>
> discrepancies between docs, and who knows
what.) I failed. So I am<br>
> stuck, and that is not mainly your fault. The
problem is that there is<br>
> no Linux-wide packaging or installation system.
It may or may not be<br>
> technically feasible, I don't know). When
things go wrong, I often have<br>
> no idea how to fix them.<br>
> <br>
> <br>
> You really shouldn't have to download any files.
You should only have to <br>
> run "sudo apt update && sudo apt install
bibletime". Or, if you want to <br>
> compile BibleTime from source but use the packaged
Sword library, "sudo <br>
> apt install libsword-dev". Currently, Xiphos is not
compatible with <br>
> Debian/Ubuntu because it depends on ancient
libraries that are not <br>
> available in those distributions anymore. However,
packagers for those <br>
> distros, until recently, were maintaining a heavily
patched version of <br>
> Xiphos that was avilable in their repositories. All
that was needed was <br>
> "sudo apt install xiphos". No downloading or
building or manually <br>
> finding dependencies.<br>
> <br>
> <br>
> So I have two suggestions here, but let me
start with an analogy.<br>
> When I<br>
> have to buy a new vehicle, my concern is not if
the seat is nice and<br>
> the<br>
> radio works and the vanity light works. I want
it to safely take me<br>
> where I want to go. If there is a rip in the
seat or dents in the body<br>
> or some rust or something, I can live with
that. So, I am willing to<br>
> live with what is in the repositories and not
waste everybody else's<br>
> time with bug reports. I apologize for doing
that. It was not<br>
> intentional, but that is what happened.<br>
> <br>
> Suggestion 1: Clean up documentation. Prime
exhibit: May Crosswire page<br>
> refers to Sword 1.8.0 with link for months with
no mention of 1.8.1.<br>
> <br>
> <br>
> I'm not sure where you're looking. This is the
download page for Sword <br>
> source <a href="http://crosswire.org/sword/develop/index.jsp" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://crosswire.org/sword/develop/index.jsp</a>
and it mentions <br>
> 1.8.1 without incident.<br>
> <br>
> <br>
> Suggestion 2: For the more popular distros,
provide ready-to-go<br>
> packages, .deb files (or equivalent, such as
.rpm) for installs and<br>
> updates, even if they do not hit the
repositories until later. This<br>
> will<br>
> get users access who are not experts. In my
opinion, for what it is<br>
> worth, this is at least as important as new
features. Also allow users<br>
> an option to automatically check for updates
and tell where to get a<br>
> new<br>
> package. I understand that this takes time and
work. I would rather get<br>
> some new features and bug fixes, and be able to
get and use them, than<br>
> new features I will never see because I can't
compile or something. I<br>
> rather think that others are also in my
position as well.<br>
> <br>
> <br>
> This is usually a Very Bad Idea for upstream
projects. Every distro has <br>
> its own quirks, foibles, and differences. For
instance, gtkhtml is still <br>
> avilable on Fedora but not on Ubuntu or Debian. As
such, Xiphos can be <br>
> compiled rather readily on Fedora but not on
Debian/Ubuntu without heavy <br>
> patching of the source to disable the editor
features. Those are details <br>
> already managed by the packagers of those
distributions and are quite a <br>
> nightmare for every upstream project to keep track
of. Nor is it easy to <br>
> keep separate the very tiny tweaks that make up the
Debian -> Ubuntu -> <br>
> Mint/Pop/etc food chain where downstream
distributions consume upstream <br>
> packages in some manner. Providing a build is not
something upstream <br>
> projects like Sword ought to do.<br>
> <br>
> Should our docs be updated so that they work in
those distros, where <br>
> possible? Yes. But it sounds like most of your
difficulty was with the <br>
> package manager on the Debian (or Ubuntu?) system
you were using. For an <br>
> end user, you should have just "sudo apt install
<my pacage>" and been <br>
> able to get along without trouble. The fact you
weren't was a failure on <br>
> the part of the distribution. Not on Sword,
Crosswire, BibleTime, or <br>
> Xiphos. I have no idea what your ultimate goal is,
though, so I can't <br>
> give you more particular details than that.<br>
> <br>
> --Greg<br>
> <br>
> <br>
> For what it is worth, and sorry it is so long.
Sorry again for wasting<br>
> all your time in the past. God bless you and
keep up all the good work.<br>
> It is not perfect, but it is definitely good
and I use your stuff many<br>
> hours a week and every day.<br>
> <br>
> Sincerely,<br>
> Tom Sullivan<br>
> <br>
> -- <br>
> Tom Sullivan<br>
> <a href="mailto:info@BeForgiven.INFO" target="_blank">info@BeForgiven.INFO</a><br>
> FAX: 815-301-2835<br>
> ---------------------<br>
> <br>
> <br>
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