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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: KDE Installation Tips
From:       Zeljko Vukman <vukman () adr ! dk>
Date:       2000-12-20 1:21:38
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On Tuesday 19 December 2000 19:34, Suzanne Britton wrote:
> Greets all,
>
> I'm putting up some pages on KDE, one of which is a set of tips for
> intalling from source. It's at http://www.igs.net/~tril/kde/tips.html.
> Before I unleash it on the unsuspecting public, does anyone here have
> corrections or suggestions?
>
> Thanks,
> Suzanne

Dear Suzanne,

As curious as I am, I coulnd't resist to visit your kde-tips site.
My first question is: who are going to read about kde compilation tricks?
Developers? I doubt it. Experienced users? I doubt it. These two groups know
everything about compiling kde 'couse they do that almost every day.
So, only people who never tried to compile kde or compile anything at all will
read tips about it. But problem with your approach is the same as in almost
every Linux HowTo - you assume that readers are experienced users who already
know everything about Linux or which is worse you tell them to read 
LinuxHowTo's and come back to your site and use your tips. I will try to give 
you examples what is wrong. You write:

1. 'set your umask to 022...' - every newbie will be confused with this and 
this is one of the first sentences on your site. Enough to give up. Logical
questions are: What is umask? How to set umask to 022. Examples Suzzane.

2. 'Clear away all traces of any KDE 1.x installation...' - Logical question 
is: How to do that? How to clear traces?

3. 'Add /usr/local/qt/bin and /usr/local/kde/bin to the PATH' - How? Give 
example.

4. 'Add /usr/local/qt/lib to /etc/ld.so.conf' - Where in ld.so.config ? First 
line, second line? Give example.

5. 'For kdesupport, you may at this point want to edit the Makefile under 
mimelib' - Where an how? Example.

6. 'For a little extra efficiency, you can strip the binaries and shared 
libraries' - Explain what does 'strip the binaries' mean. 

Some things should be added to your site like these options: --prefix= ;
--with-qt-dir= ; --with-qt-libraries= ; --with-qt-includes=  'cause different
distros have different locations where they put qt2 & kde. And give examples.
For example, I have my stable kde2 installed in /usr and qt2 is in 
/usr/lib/qt2. But I compile unstable version to /opt. So my command to 
configure is: ./configure --prefix=/opt --with-qt-dir=/usr/lib/qt2 
--with-qt-libraries=/usr/lib/qt2/lib --with-qt-includes=/usr/lib/qt2/include .

And what if you get errors when you compile? Then you should maybe suggest
that compilation can be finished by: make -k.

Etc.

Best regards,

 
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