Deploy to Linux

Richmond Mathewson richmondmathewson at gmail.com
Thu Sep 17 05:34:01 EDT 2009


Monte Goulding wrote:
> Howdy
>
> I need to build and deploy an application on Linux as my client is 
> looking at the low end netbooks. I haven't looked at Linux for a long 
> time and thought I'd get some advice before I jump in. From memory, 
> application installation/packaging was specific to the distribution???
>
> If someone could talk me through the process they go through to deploy 
> on Linux it would be appreciated.
>
My experience in this area is fairly limited:

I deploy on tatty old Pentium 3s running various Ubuntu distros  (Debian 
derivative).
As far as I am aware all Debian derived distros behave the same way 
vis-a-vis
RunRev.

I ALWAYS build my standalones on a PC running the target OS having found 
that
fonts screw-up really badly if I build for Linux on a Mac; or for 
Windows on a Mac
(my favoured development platform).

If you SIMPLY run-off a Linux standalone on Linux there is absolutely no 
need
for fancy packaging as the standalone is a single file (unless, ha, ha, 
you are
storing and referencing data externally: a minefield mainly resulting in
headaches and lack of sleep).  The main problem that I have found with
more recent Ubuntu distros is that when the standalone is installed
(I usually bung it in the HOME directory inside its own directory) the OS
sees it as a document unless you set the permissions to READ/WRITE for
everybody and select the ALLOW THIS TO BEHAVE AS AN EXECUTABLE
check box.

BEFORE YOU BUILD THE STANDALONE !!!!!!!!!

Open the stack on Linux and go through ALL the text fields and make sure
they are set to a standard Linux font, otherwise you will end up with them
being filled with some sort of generic font at a miniscule size.

FORGET Movies.

FORGET externally referenced sound files.

------------------------------------------------------------------
Cheap-and-Nasty way to manage this if you don't have a
dedicated PC running the target distro and RunRev for Linux:

1. Buy an old piece of junk: a P4 with 512 MB RAM and an 8 GB Hard Disk
will serve you very well indeed. Here in Bulgaria they are going for
about 50 bucks; over your way probably for less.

2. Bung the latest version of the target Linux distro on the piece of junk.

(It is always a good idea to have a piece of junk lying around for "playing
games" of this sort - save you a lot of headaches when it's too late.)

3. Install the month's trial of the latest RunRev for Linux on the piece of
junk.

4. Transfer you stack across to the pice of junk (LAN/USB/CD).

5. Build the thing.



More information about the use-livecode mailing list