[bt-devel] Fwd: bsreview.org, Linux, and BibleTime

[Martin Gruner]

Hi Ralph, hi bt-devel readers,


can you help Karl and Ruben Gomez?

@Karl: I'm forwarding your email as I do not do any binary packaging myself. I 
hope others will be able to help you.


Thank you.

mg
----------  Weitergeleitete Nachricht  ----------

Betreff: bsreview.org, Linux, and BibleTime
Datum: Sonntag 03 August 2008
Von: Karl Kleinpaste <karl at kleinpaste.org>
An: Martin Gruner <mg.pub at gmx.net>

Over the course of this past week, I found myself in contact with the
owner of Bible Software Review, Rubén Gómez <ruben at bsreview.org>.  We've
been having quite a discussion and he's got a renewed interest in Linux
Bible software.

Unfortunately I've gotten him sidetracked inadvertently into a problem
with getting BibleTime running on his Ubuntu box.  I'm not a Ubuntu user
(I use Fedora) but my understanding is that Ubuntu repositories have a
very old Sword 1.5.9, an almost-as-old GnomeSword 2.2.3, and a fairly
old BibleTime 1.6.something-that's-not-current.  When I looked at
BibleTime's SourceForge area, I found nothing more recent than 1.5.9
there, too, which dismayed me considerably.

Although Fedora repos have very recent versions of Sword, GnomeSword,
and BibleTime, I had to point him at domcox' builds of GnomeSword and
Sword, as found at domcox' own site.  Then he wanted to get BibleTime
installed, which he got from somewhere I didn't recognize, whereupon BT
complained on startup of having an incompatible library.  And he
wondered what's up, and I editorialized somewhat bitterly about the
state of keeping repos synchronized with current releases, and so on.

Could I suggest that you try to help him rectify his problem?  He is
already (and again, apparently) somewhat dismayed at the state of
"general user wants to get cool new software installed" problems on
Linux, but on the other hand he's willing just to build from source if
he has to.  I believe his comment was approximately "I'm not afraid of
the Terminal."

I fear that the fundamental problem is that domcox' libsword packages
are from very recent 1.5.11 but I am not aware that BT has a Ubuntu
package anywhere which was built against such a package.  I will also be
writing to ask domcox if he could simply build a current release of BT
against his own libsword in order that both applications be available
for Ubuntu from the same place.

When my discussion with him induced some early back-and-forth in email,
I had high hopes that The Sword Project and our apps themselves might
find some useful public viewing.  But now I am afraid that we will be
stuck with comments on bsreview.org that will consist of "well, it would
be really cool, but it's a nightmare just to set it up, and that's the
problem Linux has always had."

Fundamentally, I still want to know why Ubuntu repos just can't keep up
with current releases.  Fedora manages fine.

Any assist you could render to the gentleman would be appreciated.

--karl

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