🚀 go-pugleaf

The original article generated some thoughtful posts,
but I would like to chip in with a few points which seems
not mentioned. Also, I am no C wiz, no unix guru nor a full
time sysadmin, so it might come off a bit different.

GNU stuff is a lot of stuff. There is a substantial fraction that
installs trivially. Personally I have installed some
smaller stuff like fileutils, shellutils, tar, compress
which have all compiled+installed trivially on both
NeXTs and sometimes on sparcs. Also, bash has compiled trivially
on both platforms. All these utilities have been
useful to us, they are much better than their unix
counterparts when the unix counterparts exist.
eg. tar which can do remote dumps, VERY fast grep,
cut which does not come with NeXT, bash, my favorite
shell, etc.

On bigger projects like gcc, libgcc, g++, gdb, emacs, bash, etc,
it would be nice if stuff did install trivially
and in some cases they do. But compiling+installing a fully
working compiler from the source by bootstrapping
sounds like a serious biz to me. I wouldn't be surprised
if it did not work perfectly the first time around.
(I have not compiled gcc, since I use NeXTs mostly
and they come with gcc, albeit older version.)

When I have had problems, I have posted bug reports
to the net or have emailed it to the maintainers.
I have either gotten help from the net or picked
up a newer version a few weeks to a couple months) later
to find that the problem has gone.
Also, some archives carry compiled versions in addition
to the source so that you can often avoid the trouble/pleasure
of compiling if you wish (this is true in the NeXT community, must
be true of the muuuch larger sun community too, I should think.)

Also, I think that having the code out in the open
is a *good thing*. As we can see, people report in bugs,
fixes and requests all the time on the net. As a result, 
I think the GNU software evolves more rapidly than
the usual commercial software.

I really appreciate the quality software the GNU project
has given us for free. I believe in the GNU philosophy
and I do not think they will become developers' tools.
Even if they did, people will not be able to charge
that much for installing or putting nice frontends
to GNU soft since they will be undercut (since it is
usually not difficult)

I just reread this; hmm... Am I wearing my rose-tinted glasses
today....

Hoping that GNU project proceeds steadily and with energy,
-- 
                        ___Kenichiro Aoki. (aoki@physics.ucla.edu)