developing on linux part 1

[Bob Warren]

Peter wrote:

[A whole lot of fantastic stuff]

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Wow! Thanks for that, Peter. Perhaps in another 5 years or so, I'll know 
half of what you know about Linux. Now that the Linux ball has begun to 
roll in Rev, people like me need people like you, so don't go away, will 
you?

People need to discover the practicalities of dealing with Linux in 
their programming, and there is a lot of bewilderment out there. I have 
said repeatedly, "Let's kick off with Ubuntu", so much so that people 
with an "either/or" way of thinking have started to get the wrong 
impression, and some people are distinctly afraid of all this attention 
to a single distro.

What I have in mind is a pilot scheme regarding Rev/Linux.  Let's start 
with Ubuntu itself, the most dominant and easy to use distro currently, 
until we all know where we are and where we stand. Hell, that's already 
1000% better than not using Linux at all! Once this has been done, then 
the most natural thing is to move to Ubuntu-based Linuxes, and there are 
quite a lot of them nowadays (including Mepis, Mint, etc., etc.). In 
stage 3, the world is at our feet.

Rev have always been anxious to make their product as compatible as 
possible with the greatest number of Linuxes. This is great. But in 
practical terms during this initial stage, you only have to try using 
Rev 2.6.1 with a few of them in order to very quickly discover the 
problems involved. At this moment in Linux history, "compatibility" with 
a great number of Linuxes is perhaps possible, but guaranteeing that the 
Rev IDE works FULLY in more than a few Linuxes is probably impossible! 
And that's to say nothing of our own Rev applications that might have to 
face even more complex problems of compatibility.

To begin, we need a Rev Linux that works! Even if we select a single 
Linux like Ubuntu to begin with, we need to remember that Linux 
(including Ubuntu) is in a constant state of intensive development. For 
example, as you might know, I produced a pair of File/Picture Chooser 
Widgets for Ubuntu which included the detection and possible use of a 
floppy diskette drive. Since my first version, Ubuntu have changed 
completely the way they detect and mount floppies, and my widgets in 
their original version don't work any more! And Ubuntu didn't ask my 
opinion before they did it! So what is needed I think is the setting up 
of some kind of dialogue between Rev and the Linux producers (in this 
case Ubuntu) to make sure as far as possible that significant changes to 
the internal functioning of the OS's don't completely clobber 
applications such as those produced in Rev.

There are indications that RR are considering this idea.

Bob