Rev for Linux (was Re: iPadding around?)

[Bernard Devlin]

On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 8:33 AM, Peter Alcibiades
<palcibiades-first at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> My point about the Rev support is this.  I don't know exactly what you could
> do to STOP Rev running on Mandriva or the Slackware derivatives.  Its a
> crazy idea.  It runs on them by default.  Its not that Rev has a problem
> with some distros, what works on one works on all.  Its the generic level of
> feature support that is the problem.

Sorry to disagree Peter, It is not just at the generic level where
there are problems.  I am assuming by the generic level you mean the
way that Rev on Linux is treated like the unloved stepchild of Windows
and OS X (developer previews meant to flush out bugs only being
released for OS X and Windows, the lack of features like revBrowser,
persistent bugs in things like revPrintField, etc).

But there are problems with distributions other than Ubuntu/Debian.
Take for example this problem reported by me concerning Mandriva (and
as mentioned by Runrev in the comments, also occurring on Suse):
http://quality.runrev.com/qacenter/show_bug.cgi?id=8513 .  And someone
was asking in the forums recently about his issues with getting Rev to
run on Mandriva -- he couldn't even get it to start (and from previous
conversations I've had with him, he was no newbie).

There are several other issues I've seen where a problem would appear
in one version of Linux, but be absent in another.  Some of them have
been reported by me in the RQCC over the years whilst I've been trying
to get Rev running on Linux.

This is why I think it is important that there is feature parity AND
at least one distribution where Rev is known to work fully.  I can see
myself how much time would be consumed cross-testing on different
distributions.  Ubuntu has not been my preferred choice over the
years, but if that is the distro they choose to support (and support
fully) then I can live with that.

If Runrev can offer a compelling development tool on at least one
version of Linux it should lead to an increased demand for Rev on
Linux.  Further down the line other distros can be added to the list
of 'fully supported' distributions.

Bernard