Forum > Lazarus
Lazarus Season of Code - Pre-eliminary Announcement
felipemdc:
Dear sirs/madams, the Lazarus Donations fund is proud to announce that it plans to use part of it's funds to finance new developments which will increase the development possibilities using Free Pascal and Lazarus. It will focus on attracting students and coders to develop strategically important parts which are currently missing due to the lack of developers. For more information please see:
http://wiki.freepascal.org/Lazarus_Season_of_Code
Note, however, that all of this is pre-eliminary information and that all dates, values, tasks, rules, and in general nearly everything about the project may change in the next months.
JuhaManninen:
I took the liberty to add a task for proper Lazarus installers.
Installation is now much too difficult. This is a typical situation in an open source project. There are few core developers who already know how to install.
The ones that suffer from the problem don't know how to fix it.
There are many examples of programs that are easy to install. One of them is http://www.teamviewer.com (which I just learned to know). There is a big Start/Download button which can't be missed. It recognizes your OS and offers the right package, RPM or DEB for Linux, DMG for Mac, EXE for Windows (could be also MSI), app store link for iPhone.
A Linux distro that has FPC and Lazarus available in its package server is now the best OS for installing Lazarus bacause the package manager takes care of FPC dependency for Lazarus.
Click and OK, just like it should be.
Other platforms have problems. For example Windows:
I installed Lazarus for Windows for the first time. Then I had already installed SVN versions of both FPC and Lazarus on Linux, configured git-svn link to use the subversion server directly with git, and committed lots of code for the converter in Lazarus. So I was not a complete newbie any more.
Still I had to ask instructions on chat for how to install on Windows, and without asking it would have gone wrong. Namely I would have chosen "fpc-2.4.0.source.zip" instead of "fpcbuild-2.4.0.zip" when I wanted FPC sources.
The goal should be a one-click installer for anyone who wants to try Lazarus.
Juha
Martin_fr:
--- Quote from: JuhaManninen on July 28, 2010, 03:03:49 pm ---A Linux distro that has FPC and Lazarus in its package server is now the best OS for installing Lazarus because the package manager takes care of FPC dependency for Lazarus.
Just click and OK, just like it should be.
--- End quote ---
Interesting, I always thought the windows installation was/is the easiest?
When I first joined Lazarus, I downloaded, and installed it on windows => no problems encountered, it just worked...
On Linux, I often see people asking, because they have problems. they chose the wrong package in their package manager; and then the gtk-devel and other devel packages are missing, nothing works.
- Or they install it in some way, that only root can use it...
- Or (at least in the older days), you had to add a link/entry to your package manager first...
On Mac, you need some devel stuff to...
Anyway: I do not think that all can be solved by an installer => dependencies on linux are best solved by the package manager. Trying to re-create this in your own installer can always only be of lesser quality...
Same for the devel stuff on Mac (since I guess licensing will not allow to bundle it into the Laz installer?
The things that can be improved, is for the (semi) advanced user/developers. [1]
A second installation for example => that needs a diff config dir; or uses a pre-installed fpc (on Windows)
[1] semi advanced => developers who are ready for advanced stuff, but simply haven't gone through the pitfalls
Anyway, they need to go through the pitfalls at some time.
But for what it is worth => checking for any pre-installed stuff, and at least give feedback (or options if possible) is a reasonable idea
felipemdc:
--- Quote from: JuhaManninen on July 28, 2010, 03:03:49 pm ---I took the liberty to add a task for proper Lazarus installers.
--- End quote ---
Sure, the list is for ideas. I will review the ideas and decide which ones are prioritary enough to make it to the project. Now, into your specific suggestion:
--- Quote ---The goal should be a one-click installer for anyone who wants to try Lazarus.
--- End quote ---
The Windows installer is already one-click. You don't need to install the FPC source separately. I don't follow up why you needed to install it separetely.
JuhaManninen:
--- Quote from: felipemdc on July 28, 2010, 03:39:53 pm ---The Windows installer is already one-click. You don't need to install the FPC source separately. I don't follow up why you needed to install it separetely.
--- End quote ---
Hmmm... lets see. I actually wanted to install FPC which can build the latest Lazarus, and configure FPC sources for Lazarus. I didn't even try installing the "official" version. If it's already a one click install then good.
But still it can be improved a lot, on many platforms. My fried's desperate attempt to install Lazarus on Mac is a good example. We both wasted many hours and we both become frustrated.
Please remember that the same person was able to install TeamViewer in ~30 seconds and it started to work right away. That's why I took TeamViewer as an example of a good installer.
Is Mac really the only exception for otherwise easy to install Lazarus? I don't believe.
Juha
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page