[aprssig] Xastir install issues

[Curt, WE7U]

On Mon, 28 Nov 2005, Dave Baxter wrote:

> Xastir, I also would like to try that, the screenshots look good, but,
> getting anything running on Linux, unless it was distributed with it, or
> specificaly compiled for the distro you have seems next to impossible,
> or am I expecting too much?  In this day and age, having to have a user
> recompile and link an application, just to get it to run is in my mind
> unaceptable, if just that too many things can (read did!) go wrong,
> ending up needing to reinstall Linux. (Suse V9)

There are some pre-compiled binaries of Xastir available.  SuSE 9.0
is one of them, in case you ever want to give it another shot...

There is a move afoot to provide a minimum standard set of libraries
with most all Linux distributions, then compile apps to use those.
The project is called Linux Standard Base, and includes generally
useful libraries whose API dosen't change much over time.  If an
application is compiled to use only the LSB set of libraries, it is
likely that the binary will install/run on any of the Linux
distributions that support LSB.

Unfortunately the LSB set of libraries is not adequate for Xastir:
It needs quite a few more libaries in order to do its thing, many of
which have API's which change quite rapidly.  For this reason you
still need a binary compiled for your exact Linux/Unix
distribution/version, or else you need to compile Xastir from
sources.

We do understand that for beginners, compiling from sources can seem
quite an undertaking.  After you do it once it's not that big of a
deal, plus there are people on the mailing list that can help answer
questions as you go along.  Sorry it didn't work out for you the
first time around!

--
Curt, WE7U.   APRS Client Comparisons: http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
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