[Fluxus] fluxus 17 beta compilation feedback

[Kassen]

Dear List,

This afternoon I managed to compile the beta for v17 for source. I'd like to
give some feedback on this because I believe people doing something for the
first time will notice stuff hidden from seasoned veterans.

I started by going down the list of dependencies and apt-get-ing the "-dev"
version of packages that the .deb from pure:dyne had already gotten me the
library for. I noticed that this process was made a lot easier by the .deb
depending on certain libraries as some of these dependencies come in a
bewildering and cryptically named assortment of flavours. I got PLT from a
package, got scons and tried scons. That immediately backfired as the
PLTScheme .deb doesn't come with the linkable libraries. I first looked for
headers in my package manager but couldn't find any and eventually build PLT
from source instead. This was me being stubborn as the docs do indicate this
step is likely needed. I'd add something to indicate that many/most package
managers don't include the shared libraries mentioning Ubuntu (and Fedora?).

PLT was a long compile and its download page didn't mention the X11
libraries needed so I had two false-starts. Aside from that it was rather
uneventful and exceedingly boring.

I went back to trying to build Fluxus. Scons turned out the be very helpful
and pleasant to work with. It stopped several times at unmet dependencies
which I could then get. I'm fairly sure some of those didn't get mentioned
in the dependency list from the README. After that Scons would
-apparently- successfully build, despite printing notices about unmet
dependencies around the start of the build process. These seemed to all
refer to video support. I decided to look those up, get them and start over.
This took a few tries. It wasn't clear to me why those weren't cause for
Scons to abort the attempt and I noticed that if I would've waited or not
have paid attention those errors would have been out of my terminal's buffer
by the time Scons would have finished. I elected to do it properly rather
than run into errors later on. I'm sure some of those dependencies aren't in
the README file yet. That section is something I would say needs a update
after v16.

End good all good; Fluxus17b1 now runs here without any errors. As a compile
it works for me without me ever getting stuck, but this process would be
beyond novice Linux users. We are doing quite well with packages lately but
I'd say that the docs on rolling one's own could still use a
few clarifications here and there.

I hope this will be of help, even if it's only a momentary and personal
experience.

Yours,
Kas.
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